Today in History: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, London, England

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 2:

1953 – The coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II took place at Westminster Abbey in London; it was the first coronation to be televised.

1966 – U.S. spacecraft Surveyor I made a successful soft landing on the moon and began sending back the first close-up pictures of the moon’s surface.

1979 – Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland, becoming first Pope to visit a Communist country.

1988 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan visits British PM Thatcher at Downing Street.

1989 - 10,000 Chinese soldiers are blocked by 100,000 citizens in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, protecting students demonstrating for democracy.

1990 – British actor Sir Rex Harrison died. He was best known for playing the role of Professor Higgins in the musical “My Fair Lady”.

1997 – Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people.

1997 – Helen Jacobs, U.S. tennis player, died at the age of 88. She won four successive U.S. singles titles (1932-1935), and then won Wimbledon in 1936 when she was ranked number one in the world.

1999 – Japanese women finally won the right to use the birth control pill, more than three decades after it first appeared in the West.

2010 – U.S. President Barack Obama awards singer Paul McCartney the 3rd Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

2008 – Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley, who banged out hit songs powered by the relentless “Bo Diddley beat” that influenced rockers from Buddy Holly to U2, died.

2017 – U.N. Security Council votes to expand North Korean blacklist.

(Reuters)