more events on June 2
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1969
The Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne slices the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half off the shore of South Vietnam.
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1954
Senator Joseph McCarthy charges that there are communists working in the CIA and atomic weapons plants.
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1953
Elizabeth II is crowned queen of England at Westminster Abbey.
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1948
Jamaican-born track star Herb McKenley sets a new world record for the 400 yard dash.
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1946
Italian citizens vote by referendum for a republic.
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1944
Allied “shuttle bombing” of Germany begins, with bombers departing from Italy and landing in the Soviet Union.
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1942
The American aircraft carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown move into their battle positions for the Battle of Midway.
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1928
Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek captures Peking, China, in a bloodless takeover.
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1924
The United States grants full citizenship to American Indians.
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1913
Barbara Pym (Mary Crampton), English novelist (Less Than Angels, Quartet in Autumn).
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1910
Charles Stewart Rolls, one of the founders of Rolls-Royce, becomes the first man to fly an airplane nonstop across the English Channel both ways. Tragically, he becomes Britain’s first aircraft fatality the following month when his biplane breaks up in midair.
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1904
Johnny Weissmuller, American gold-winning Olympic swimmer who portrayed Tarzan in films.
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1903
Robert Morris Page, physicist, inventor of pulse radar.
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1886
Grover Cleveland becomes the first American president to wed while in office.
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1883
The first baseball game under electric lights is played in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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1865
At Galveston, Texas, Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders the Trans-Mississippi Department to Union forces.
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1859
French forces cross the Ticino River.
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1840
Thomas Hardy, English poet and novelist (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles).
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1818
The British army defeats the Maratha alliance in Bombay, India.
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1793
Maximilien Robespierre, a member of France’s Committee on Public Safety, initiates the “Reign of Terror.”
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1774
The Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to allow British soldiers into their houses, is reenacted.
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1740
Donatien Alphonse Francois, the Marquis de Sade.
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1731
Martha Dandridge, the first First Lady of the United States. Widow of Daniel Park Custis, she married George Washington in 1759.
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1537
Pope Paul III bans the enslavement of Indians in the New World.