historical calendar - February 9

London, Feb 2 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on February 9 in history: 1923 - Dobrolet, the Soviet state airline, was formed. It was renamed Aeroflot in 1932.

1969 - The first test flight of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet took place.

1981 - Legendary US rock and roll singer Bill Haley died.

1984 - Soviet leader Yuri Andropov died. A former KGB chief, he succeeded Leonid Brezhnev in late 1982 and was in power for less than 15 months.

1991 - Lithuanians voted by a huge majority to restore the Soviet republic's pre-World War Two independence.

1996 - A huge Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded in London's Docklands business district, killing two and injuring 100. The blast marked the end of a 17-month IRA ceasefire.

1998 - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze survived an assassination attempt.

2001 - A surfacing US nuclear submarine, the USS Greeneville, struck and sank a Japanese fishing trawler off Hawaii killing nine of the 35 people on board.

2002 - Britain's Princess Margaret, the queen's sister, died at the age of 71 after a life of glamour and heartbreak.

2003 - Weeks before US-led forces invaded Iraq, Pope John Paul made an appeal for world prayer to avert war and later sent a top cardinal on a peace mission to Baghdad.

REUTERS MS KP1012