What happened on June 2 ?

455 - The Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks.

576 - Benedict I becomes Pope.

657 - St. Eugene I becomes Pope.

1615 - First Récollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France.

1763 - Pontiac's Rebellion: At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan, Chippewas capture Fort Michilimackinac by diverting the garrison's attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

1774 - Intolerable Acts: The Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to let British soldiers into their homes, is reenacted.

1780 - The Derby horse race is held for the first time.

1793 - Jean Paul Marat recites the names of 29 people to the French National Convention. Almost all of these are guillotined, followed by 17,000 more over the course of the next year during the Reign of Terror.

1800 - First smallpox vaccination in North America, at Trinity, Newfoundland.

1835 - P. T. Barnum and his circus begins their first tour of the United States.

1848 - Slavic congress in Prague begins.

1855 - The Portland Rum Riot occurs in Portland, Maine.

1886 - U.S. President Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom in the White House, becoming the only president to wed in the executive mansion.

1896 - Guglielmo Marconi receives a patent for his newest invention: the radio.

1909 - Alfred Deakin becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the third time.

1924 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.

1925 - Wally Pipp, first baseman of the New York Yankees, asks for a day off due to a headache. He is replaced in the lineup by Lou Gehrig, who also starts the next 2,128 consecutive games.

1946 - Birth of the Italian Republic: In a referendum Italians decide to turn Italy from a monarchy into a Republic. After this referendum the king of Italy Umberto II di Savoia is exiled.

1953 - Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the first to be televised.

1955 - USSR and Yugoslavia sign the Belgrade declaration and thus normalize relations between both countries, discontinued since 1948.

1965 - Vietnam War: The first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives in South Vietnam.

1966 - Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarumon the Moon, becoming the first US spacecraft to soft land on another world.

1967 - Protests in West Berlin against the arrival of the Shah of Iran turn into riots, during which Benno Ohnesorg is killed by a police officer. His death results in the founding of the terrorist group Movement 2 June.

1969 - In Ottawa, Canada the National Arts Centre opens its doors to the public for the first time.

1975 - French sex workers occupied a Lyon church in protest against excessive fines and taxes, as well as a lack of police action against violence, thereby sparking the birth of the modern sex worker rights movement.

1979 - Pope John Paul II visits his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country.

1985 - Serial killer Leonard Lake is arrested near San Francisco, California for shoplifting.

1995 - United States Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady's F-16 is shot down over Bosnia while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone.

1997 - Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

1998 - The CIH computer virus is discovered in Taiwan.

1999 - The Bhutan Broadcasting Service finally brings television transmissions to the Kingdom for the first time.

2003 - Europe launches its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe launches from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.