01010602 This Day In History, June 2

455: Gaiseric and the Vandals (from which the term "vandalism originated) captured and plundered Rome (see also The Arian Kingdoms).

597: Augustine, missionary to England and the first archbishop of Canterbury, baptized Saxon king Ethelbert. The Christian-professing faith then spread rapidly among the Angles and Saxons.

1098: During the First Crusade (see Constantine's Crusades In History And Prophecy), the first Siege of Antioch ended when Crusader forces captured the city.

1420: King Henry V of England married Catherine of Valois, daughter of King Charles VI of France.

1692: Bridget Bishop became the first woman to face the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. She was hanged on June 10.

1734: During the War of the Polish Succession, Russia and Austria took Danzig after a siege which had begun in October of the year before.

1740: Comte Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, known as the Marquis de Sade, French writer and man of letters, was born. The perversion term "sadism" is derived from his name.

1763: During Pontiac's Rebellion in Michigan, Chippewas captured Fort Michilimackinac by diverting the defender's attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

1780: Riots began in London in protest against Parliament's plans to extend the Catholic Relief Act, canceling restrictions on Roman Catholics.

1793: Maximillian Robespierre, a member of France’s Committee on Public Safety, began the "Reign of Terror," a purge of those accused of disloyalty against the French Republic.

1818: The British defeated the alliance of Maratha in Bombay, India.

1848: The Slavic congress in Prague began.

1886: U.S. President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in the White House, becoming the only President to be married in the White House. The groom was 49, the bride was 22.

1896: Guglielmo Marconi applied for a patent for his new invention: the radio.

1910: Charles Stewart Roll became the first man to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

1924: The U.S. granted full citizenship to the native people, the "Indians" (ironically, the "American" government granted citizenship to the original Americans who lived there for millennia before the European immigrants, who later claimed themselves to be the Americans, came).

1928: Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek captured Peking in a bloodless takeover.

1949: Transjordan was renamed Jordan (see also Beyond Jordan).

1953: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II took place at Westminster Abbey in London, 4 months after the death of her father King George VI. It was the first coronation seen on television.

1969: The Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne collided with the U.S. destroyer Frank E. Evans off the coast of South Vietnam. The destroyer was split in two.

1979: Pope John Paul II arrived in Poland in the first visit by a Pope to a communist country.

1997: A jury in Denver found Timothy McVeigh guilty of the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people.

2003: The European Space Agency launched its first space vehicle to another planet, the Mars Express. It was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.