1941 -- British forces retreated to Hong Kong island as the invading Japanese army took Kowloon and the New Territories.

1967 -- King Constantine of Greece and his family fled the country after a counter-coup failed to topple the military-backed government.

1979 -- Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark's seven-month-old Progressive Conservative government was defeated in a vote of no confidence in parliament.

1981 -- Poland's government imposed martial law and took its biggest step so far to stifle the Solidarity trade union movement's unprecedented challenge to communist rule.

1982 -- An earthquake in Yemen killed 3,000 people and injured 2,000.

1983 -- Civilian Turgut Ozal became prime minister of Turkey after three years of military rule.

1991 -- North and South Korea signed a non-aggression accord.

1995 -- Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was imprisoned for 14 years for subversive acts. He was released and went into exile in the United States in 1997.

1996 -- The UN Security Council made official its selection of Kofi Annan of Ghana as the UN secretary-general to succeed Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

1997 -- Giovanni Agnelli, heir to the dynasty that controlled the Italian car giant Fiat, died from cancer at the age of 33.

2003 -- U.S. troops found former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground behind a shepherd's hut near his home town of Tikrit.

2003 -- Zimbabwe formally informed the Commonwealth it was withdrawing from the 54-nation group over its extended suspension.

2004 -- A 34-year-old South Korean man, Yoo Young-chul, believed to be the country's worst serial killer, was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering 20 people.