View Historical Events by Day: What Happened on June 2 in History?

U.S. President Grover Cleveland age 49, marries Frances Folsom, age 21,i n the White House. Folsom became the youngest first lady in American history. Cleveland remains the only U.S. president to be married in a room of the White House. The wedding was highly publicized, though only close associates of the bride and groom were permitted to attend the ceremony. A reception was held as a public event one week later. More

Guglielmo Marconi, Italian engineer and inventor, applies for a patent in the United Kingdom. The patent 12039, titled "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor" became the first patent for a communication system based on radio waves. In 1909, Marconi received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909, which he shared with Karl Ferdinand Braun. They were recognized for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy. More

The government of the United States confers citizenship on all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the country. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law and some states continue to barred Native Americans from voting. It wasn't until 1957 that Utah became the last state to remove its laws denying Native Americans the right to vote. However, even after 1957, some Native American voters still faced barriers to accessing the ballot box. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed these issues at the federal level, outlawing discriminatory practices that denied or abridged the right to vote based on race. More

The people of Italy approved a referendum to replace the governing monarchy with a republic. More

Queen Elizabeth II is formally crowned in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey, London becoming s the thirty-ninth Sovereign to be crowned there. The ceremony, which followed her accession to the throne after the death of her father, King George VI, in February 1952, was a significant event and the first coronation to be televised. More

Protests in Beijing's Tiananmen square The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 in the midst of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China. The protestors had constructed a 10-meter tall (33 Ft.) statue they called the "Goddess of Democracy " which the sculptors said was inspired by the work of Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina. Reportedly up to one million people participated in the protests. The Statue was toppled by tanks when the Chinese government ordered Tiananmen square to be forcibly cleared two days later on June 4th. More

Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, one of the deadliest acts of terrorism in American history. He was executed on June 11, 2001 for his crimes. More