Today in History, June 2

Highlights in history on this date:

1567 - Irish rebel Shane O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, is killed when he takes refuge from the English with his enemies, the MacDonnells.

1771 - Russia completes its conquest of the Crimea.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte issues a liberal constitution in France.

1846 - Melbourne newspaper Argus first published.

1896 - Broadcasting by electromagnetic waves is first patented by Italian Guglielmo Marconi.

1897 - Mark Twain, 61, is quoted by the New York Journal as saying from London that "the report of my death was an exaggeration".

1917 - Brazil declares war against Germany and seizes German ships.

1924 - US Congress confirms citizenship of all American Indians.

1932 - Major Frank Holmes, a New Zealand engineer, strikes oil for the first time in Bahrain.

1946 - In a referendum, Italians choose a republic over the Savoy monarchy.

1949 - Transjordan is renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

1953 - Queen Elizabeth II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1953 - Uranium discovered at El Sherana, on Alligator River, Northern Territory.

1964 - The Palestine Liberation Organisation is formed.

1965 - Almost 200 miners are killed in coal mine explosion near Fukouoka, Japan.

1966 - US space probe Surveyor I lands on the moon and begins transmitting detailed photographs of the lunar surface.

1967 - 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, arrives in Vietnam.

1974 - Jig Singhi Wangchuk is crowned King of Bhutan at age 18, becoming the youngest monarch in the world.

1975 - US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller said his commission had found no widespread pattern of illegal activities at the Central Intelligence Agency.

1979 - Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland on the first visit by a pope to a communist country.

1985 - The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) announces an indefinite ban on English soccer clubs from European competitions after continued hooliganism by fans abroad.

1990 - Sir Rex Harrison, British actor, dies. Suave, cultured and impeccably mannered in his most famous roles, his best-known performance was that of Professor Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady.

1992 - In a referendum, Danes reject the Maastricht treaty on a closer European Union.

1997 - Timothy J McVeigh, an angry US Army veteran, is convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing that took 168 lives in 1995. He is later sentenced to death and executed.

1999 - The African National Congress wins resoundingly in South Africa's second post-apartheid elections.

2000 - South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission grants amnesty to apartheid death squad commander Eugene de Kock and other former police in the killings of 14 people.

2004 - Former rebel commanders capture a strategic town in eastern Congo, setting off a crisis that threatens the Central African country's fragile transitional government and a peace agreement that ended five years of civil war.

2006 - Five thousand Somalis denounce the US and call for Islamic law at a protest in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, where Islamic militias are battling a secular alliance.

2007 - US authorities break up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell planning an attack to destroy John F Kennedy Airport in New York.

2008 - Senior NSW Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen, 51, an assistant director of criminal investigations, is arrested at his Sydney office by Australian Federal Police and charged over alleged involvement in a multi-million dollar international drug syndicate.

2009 - Brazilian military planes find a five-kilometre path of wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed in the sea.

2010 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects international criticism of a deadly raid against a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza earlier this week, saying the blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

2011 - Scientists blame Europe's worst recorded food-poisoning outbreak on a "super toxic" E coli bacteria that may be brand new.

2014 - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swears in a national unity government, formally ending a crippling seven-year split with his Islamic Hamas rivals.

2015 - Sepp Blatter announces that he will resign as President of FIFA as a result of the corruption scandals with an emergency congress to be called as soon as possible.

2016 - A fortnight after EgyptAir flight MS804 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, a French naval vessel detects a signal from one of its black boxes. All 66 people aboard the flight from Paris to Cairo were killed.

Today's Birthdays:

John Sobieski, King of Poland (1624-1698); Thomas Hardy, English writer (1840-1928); Johnny Weissmuller, US swimmer-actor (1904-1984); Ken McGregor, Australian tennis player (1929-2007); Charlie Watts, British musician, The Rolling Stones (1941-); Charles Haid, US actor-director (1943-); Marvin Hamlisch, US composer (1944-2012); Jerry Mathers, US actor (1948-); Kerry Saxby-Junna, Australian walker (1961-); Mark and Steve Waugh, Australian cricketing twins (1965-); Taj Burrow, Australian surfer (1978-); Nikolay Davydenko, Russian professional tennis player (1981-); Todd Carney, Australian rugby league player (1986-); Steve Smith, Australian cricket captain (1989-).

Thought For Today:

Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself - in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience - Elizabeth Bowen, Irish-born author (1899-1973).

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