How to select distinct rows without using group by statement

A B C
1 1 1
1 1 1
2 2 2
2 2 2
3 3 3
3 3 3
4 4 4
4 4 4
5 5 5
5 5 5
5 5 5
6 6 6
6 6 6
I am to output only the distinct rows without using the group by statement. I cannot use group by because it makes mysql hang. So it should return

1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
4 4 4
5 5 5
6 6 6

Solutions:
If the name of your table is mytable , select distinct * from mytable will do the trick.

MySQL uses GROUP BY under the hood to execute DISTINCT !!!
If the table is called mytable, do these two things:

First run this

ALTER TABLE mytable ADD INDEX ABC (A,B,C);`
Second, run this query

SELECT A,B,C FROM mytable GROUP BY A,B,C;
GROUP BY actually works better with an index present !!!

Here is sample code to prove it works

mysql> drop database if exists cool_cs;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec)

mysql> create database cool_cs;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> use cool_cs
Database changed
mysql> create table mytable
    -> (A int,B int,C int, key ABC (A,B,C));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> INSERt INTO mytable VALUES
    -> (1,1,1),(1,1,1),(2,2,2),(2,2,2),(3,3,3),
    -> (3,3,3),(4,4,4),(4,4,4),(5,5,5),(5,5,5),
    -> (5,5,5),(6,6,6),(6,6,6);
Query OK, 13 rows affected (0.06 sec)
Records: 13  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

mysql> select a,b,c FROM mytable group by a,b,c;
+------+------+------+
| a    | b    | c    |
+------+------+------+
|    1 |    1 |    1 |
|    2 |    2 |    2 |
|    3 |    3 |    3 |
|    4 |    4 |    4 |
|    5 |    5 |    5 |
|    6 |    6 |    6 |
+------+------+------+
6 rows in set (0.02 sec)

mysql>