Today, June 2, 2023

576…. Benedict I becomes Pope.1800…. The first smallpox vaccination takes place in South America.

1896….Guglielmo Marconi receives a patent for the radio.

1937…. The Piraeus-Kifisias railway is electrified.

1946…. The Italians choose in a referendum the transformation of the state from monarchy to democracy and King Umberto II is exiled.

1953…. Elizabeth II is crowned Queen of Britain. Her coronation is the first to be televised around the world.

1955…. The leaders of Yugoslavia and the USSR, Josip Tito and Nikita Khrushchev, agree to restore their bilateral relations.

1964… Yasser Arafat founds the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in Jerusalem.

1971…. For the first time, a Greek team participates in a European football final. Panathinaikos face Ajax at Wembley for the Champions Cup and lose 2-0. PAO has in its ranks Mimi Domazos, Aristidis Kamaras, Takis Oikonomopoulos and Antonis Antoniadis, who is declared the tournament’s top scorer with 10 goals.

1985… Andreas Papandreou wins the elections for the second consecutive time. PASOK receives 45.8%, New Democracy 40.8% and KKE 9.8%.

…. On the same day, UEFA indefinitely bans all English teams from European competitions, following the Hazel tragedy.

1992…. In a referendum in Denmark, voters reject the Maastricht Treaty.

Births

On this day in 1740, Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, was born, a French aristocrat and author of bold books, from whose name the term “sadism” came, in 1904, Johnny Weismiller, American swimmer (five-time Olympic champion) and actor (“Tarzan”) and in 1940 Constantine, the last king of the Greeks.

Deaths

On the same day in 1882 the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi died, in 1969 the Yugoslav basketball player Radivoj Korac and in 1987 the Spanish musician Andrej Segovia.