Today in history—June 2

455: A Germanic-speaking tribe enters the world’s language as a term for “wanton or ignorant destruction,” as the Vandals sack Rome.

1615: The first group of Franciscan Récollet missionaries arrives at Québec, where they will subsequently set up Canada’s first brewery.

1780: The first Derby Stakes is run at Epsom Downs in Surrey, England.  Two horse owners who organize it flip a coin to decide whom it would be named after—and Sir Charles Bunbury loses to Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th earl of Derby, thus avoiding the “Kentucky Bunbury.”

1835: Twenty-five year-old Phineas Taylor Barnum starts his show business career by touring with his first act: a 160-year-old slave woman said to have been George Washington’s nurse.

1855: Citizens rioting over Maine’s new law prohibiting alcohol are suppressed by the state militia in what comes to be known as the Portland Rum Riot.

1891: Thurman Arnold (Harvard Law 1914), whose career will demonstrate you can get famous working against corporations and rich working for them, is born at Laramie, Wyoming.

1924: President Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act, which gives U.S. citizenship to Native Americans

1969: Thurman Arnold (see above) dies on his 79th birthday.

1985: R.J Reynolds and Nabisco announce plans for a merger.

1997: California voters overwhelmingly approve Proposition 227, which drastically curtails bilingual education in the state.

2004: Software engineer Kenneth Wayne Jennings III begins his record streak of 74 consecutive wins on the TV game show Jeopardy, which will net him $2.5 million in prize money.