On June 2nd...

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1535 Pope Leo XI was born.

1625 Prince Frederick Henry was sworn in as Viceroy of Zealand.

1627 King Charles I of England established the Guyana Company.

1676 A French fleet defeated a Dutch-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Palermo.

1731 Martha Dandridge, wife of President George Washington, was born.

1740 Author Marquis de Sade was born.

1763 Chippewas captured Fort Michilimackinac (now Mackinaw City, Michigan) by diverting the garrison's attention with a game of lacrosse.

1773 American politician John Randolph was born.

1774 The Quartering Act was amended to allow Governors in Colonial America to house British soldiers in uninhabited houses, barns, etc. if suitable quarters were not otherwise provided.

1815 U. S. Civil War General Philip Kearny was born.

1835 Pope Pius X was born.

1840 Novelist Thomas Hardy was born.

1851 Maine enacted the first prohibition law in the United States.

1857 James Gibbs patented a chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine.
1857 Composer Edward Elger was born.

1862 Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

1875 James Augustine Healey became the first black Catholic Bishop in the United States.

1881 The Haarlem-Zandvoort Railway opened.

1882 Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi died.

1883 Chicago's "El" opened to traffic.

1886 U.S. President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in the White House.

1896 Henry Griffin rode Hastings to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1904 Actor Johnny Weissmuller was born.

1908 Eddie Dugan rode Royal Tourist to victory in the Preakness.

1909 Eddie Dugan rode Joe Madden to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1913 Novelist Barbara Pym was born.

1924 U. S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Snyder Act, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.

1928 Swift Aircraft Corporation organized.
1928Kraft Foods introduced Velveeta.

1930 Sarah Dickson became the first woman Presbyterian elder in the United States, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1930 Astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr., was born.

1935 Baseball player Babe Ruth announced his retirement.

1936 General Anastasio Somoza Garcia became dictator of Nicaragua.

1937 Actress Sally Kellerman was born.

1940 King Constantine II of Greece was born.

1941 Actor Stacy Keach was born.
1941 Baseball player Lou Gehrig died.

1942 Baseball player Ted Williams enlisted as a U. S. Navy aviator.

1943 The German assault on Sebastopol, Crimea, began.

1944 Composer Marvin Hamlisch was born.

1946 The Italian Republic was proclaimed.
1946 Peter Sutcliffe, aka "The Yorkshire Ripper," was born.

1947 Ferenc Nagy resigned as Premier of Hungary.

1948 Actor Jerry Mathers was born.

1950 Actress Joanna Gleason was born.

1953 Elizabeth II was formally crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland.

1954 John Costello became Premier of Ireland.

1955 Comedian Dana Carvey was born.

1956 Labor leader Matthew Woll died.

1964 The Rolling Stones began their first U. S. concert tour in Lynn, Massachusetts.

1966 Surveyor 1 became the first spacecraft to make a "soft" landing on the Moon.

1967 Riots broke out in the Roxbury District of Boston, Massachusetts, after a Mothers for Adequate Welfare sit-in.
1967 U. S. Army doctor Captain Howard Levy was convicted of regusing to train Green Berets medical corpsmen for Vietnam duty.
1967 The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released.

1969 During a SEATO exercise, the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne sliced the U. S. destroyer Frank E. Evans in two, killing 74 crewmen.

1972 Comedian Wayne Brady was born.

1976 The People's Assembly of East Timor accepted annexation by Indonesia.

1979 John Paul II became the first Pope to visit a Communist country.
1979 A gasoline truck smashed into a bus on a mountain road in Thailand and exploded, killing 52 persons.

1985 Nancy Lopez won the LPGA Championship.

1986 Regular television coverage of U. S. Senate sessions began.

1987 Musician Sammy Kaye died.
1987 Classical guitarist Andrés Segovia died.

1989 The film Dead Poets Society premiered.

1990 Actor Rex Harrison died.

1991 Michael, John, and Mario Andretti finished 1-2-3, respectively, in the Miller Genuine Draft 200, at West Allis, Wisconsin.

1996 Game show host Ray Combs died.

1997 Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

2001 Actress Imogene Coca died.

2003 The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe was launched from the Baikonur Space Centre in Kazakhstan.

2004 Ken Jennings began his 74-game winning streak on "Jeopardy."

2008 Blues guitarist Bo Diddley died.

2012 Actor Richard Dawson died.

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This page was last updated on July 09, 2018.