June 2 in History

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon I. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Gaelic scholar, named his organisation after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.

Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess, was an Italian radio-frequency engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to his being largely credited as the inventor of radio and sharing the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy." His work laid the foundation for the development of radio, television, and all modern wireless communication systems.

Charles Stewart Rolls was a British motoring and aviation pioneer. With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in Bournemouth. He was aged 32.

Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A Republican lawyer from Massachusetts, he previously served as the 29th vice president from 1921 to 1923, under President Warren G. Harding, and as the 48th governor of Massachusetts from 1919 to 1921. Coolidge gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, with a taciturn personality and dry sense of humor that earned him the nickname "Silent Cal".

An institutional referendum was held by universal suffrage in the Kingdom of Italy on 2 June 1946, a key event of contemporary Italian history. Until 1946, Italy was a kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, reigning since the unification of Italy in 1861 and previously rulers of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1922, the rise of Benito Mussolini and the creation of the Fascist regime in Italy, which eventually resulted in engaging the country in World War II alongside Nazi Germany, considerably weakened the role of the royal house.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

The 1962 FIFA World Cup was the seventh edition of the FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football championship for senior men's national teams. It was held from 30 May to 17 June 1962 in Chile. The qualification rounds took place between August 1960 and December 1961, with 56 teams entering from six confederations, and fourteen qualifying for the finals tournament alongside Chile, the hosts, and Brazil, the defending champions.

The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing.

West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The legality of this claim was contested by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, although West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG from May 1949, was thereafter directly or indirectly represented in its federal institutions, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG.

Air Canada Flight 797 was an international passenger flight operating from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Montréal–Dorval International Airport, with an intermediate stop at Toronto International Airport. On 2 June 1983, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating the service developed an in-flight fire in air around the rear lavatory that spread between the outer skin and the inner decor panels, filling the plane with toxic smoke. The spreading fire also burned through crucial electrical cables that disabled most of the instrumentation in the cockpit, forcing the plane to divert to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Ninety seconds after the plane landed and the doors were opened, the heat of the fire and fresh oxygen from the open exit doors created a backdraft, and the plane's interior immediately became engulfed in flames, killing 23 passengers—half of the people on board—who were unable to evacuate the aircraft.

Denver is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Officially a consolidated city and county, it is located in the South Platte River valley on the western edge of the High Plains, and is just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains (Rockies). Denver is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth-most populous state capital, with a population of 715,522 at the 2020 census. The ten-county Denver metropolitan area, with 3.1 million residents, is the 19th-largest metropolitan area in the country and functions as the economic and cultural center of the broader Front Range Urban Corridor.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", for its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous atmosphere that is primarily carbon dioxide. At the average surface level the atmospheric pressure is a few thousandths of Earth's, atmospheric temperature ranges from −153 to 20 °C, and cosmic radiation is high. Mars retains some water, in the ground as well as thinly in the atmosphere, forming cirrus clouds, fog, frost, larger polar regions of permafrost and ice caps, but no bodies of liquid surface water. Its surface gravity is roughly a third of Earth's or double that of the Moon. Its diameter, 6,779 km (4,212 mi), is about half the Earth's, or twice the Moon's, and its surface area is the size of all the dry land of Earth.

Telangana is a state in Southern India on the Deccan Plateau bordering Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to the north and Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to the south. It is the eleventh largest and the twelfth most populated state of India. According to the Rigveda's Aitareya Brahmana, the region corresponding to Telangana has been inhabited by the Andhras since at least the 9th century BCE with the later Satavahana dynasty, who ruled over the entire Deccan Plateau, establishing trade relations as far as the Roman Empire. Subsequent major dynasties include the Vishnukundinas, Eastern Chalukyas, Kakatiyas, the Vijayanagara Empire, and Qutb Shahis, followed by the British Raj. Following the Independence of India, the Telugu speaking regions of India were gradually regrouped within the state of Andhra Pradesh but after decades of protests and agitations, the Telangana movement obtained its bifurcation with the creation, in 2014, of the state of Telangana corresponding to the Telugu speaking regions of the Princely State of Hyderabad.