NOW & THEN
2 JUNE
1771: Russia completed its conquest of the Crimea.
1780: The Gordon Riots took place in London when Lord George Gordon called his followers to St George’s Field and led them in protest at relaxation of restrictions on Roman Catholics.
1835: American showman Phineas T Barnum began his first circus tour.
1868: The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester.
1896: Marconi was granted the first patent for a system of communication by means of electromagnetic waves.
1910: Charles Stewart Rolls, in a Short-wright biplane, flew from Dover to Sangatte to become first Briton to fly the English Channel.
1916: Jack ‘Boy’ Cornwell died from wounds after the Battle of Jutland. The 16-year-old had stayed at his post by the forward gun on HMS Chester while all his fellows were killed around him. He was awarded the VC posthumously – the youngest to receive it.
1932: First railway buffet car went into service, on LMS’S London-nottingham route.
1941: Clothes rationing was introduced in Britain, and was not lifted until 1949. Sixty coupons were allowed each year for all except baby clothes. One dress needed 11 coupons, and a man’s suit, 26.
1953: Queen Elizabeth was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
1954: Lester Piggott, aged 18, became the youngest jockey to win the Derby when he rode Never Say Die, a 33-1 outsider, to victory at Epsom.
1962: Britain’s first legal casino, the Metropole in Brighton, opened.
1966: First soft landing on Moon successfully completed by US spacecraft Surveyor.
1974: King of Bhutan, Jig Singhi Wangchuk, was crowned to become, at age 18, youngest monarch in world.
1990: Liberia’s president, Samuel Doe, appealed for international help to end a rebel invasion and promised not to seek re-election in an effort to appease rebels.
1992: Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a national referendum.
1994: 25 senior intelligence officers in Northern Ireland died when their Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre.
1996: John Major’s government was again embroiled in a sleaze row as Rod Edwards, a Welsh office minister, resigned over allegations of an extra-marital affair with a divorcee.
1997: Timothy Mcveigh was found guilty of murder and conspiracy in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people died.
2003: Europe launched its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe launched from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.
2010: Gunman Derrick Bird went on the rampage in Cumbria, killing 12 people and injuring 11. Bird later killed himself.
2014: King Juan Carlos of Spain announced his abdication after 39 years on the throne, with his son, Crown Prince Felipe, to succeed him.