Today in History: Kenya becomes a republic

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 1:

1932 – Franz von Papen became German Chancellor following the resignation of Heinrich Bruening on May 30. He was later instrumental in persuading President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

1958 – General Charles de Gaulle became prime minister of France at the head of an emergency government after a crisis in French-ruled Algeria.

1964 - Kenya becomes a republic with Jomo Kenyatta as its 1st President.

1968 – Helen Keller, U.S. author, died. Deaf and blind from 19 months, she learned to communicate through language from the age of seven and went on to publish several books based on her experience notably “The Story of my Life”.

1996 – Ukraine became a nuclear weapons-free nation with the transfer of the last of its warheads to Russia.

1998 - European Central Bank is founded in Brussels to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy.

2001 – Nepal’s King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and six other family members were killed in a palace massacre by their son Crown Prince Dipendra, who then turned a gun on himself.

2002 – Britain’s Caroline Hamilton and Ann Daniels become first all-woman team to trek to both Poles.

2002 – Disgraced former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje was killed when the plane he was travelling in crashed in mountains in Western Cape province.

2003 – Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush sign Treaty of Moscow.

2003 – China blocked the Yangtze River, closing the gates on the Three Gorges dam, to fill the 600-km (365-mile) reservoir in the world’s largest hydroelectric project.

2005 – The Netherlands rejected the European Union constitution in a referendum, dealing a body blow to a treaty already spurned by France.

2009 – General Motors Corporation filed for bankruptcy, forcing the 100-year-old automaker once seen as a symbol of American economic might and dynamism into a new and uncertain era of government ownership. The bankruptcy filing was the third-largest in U.S. history and the largest ever in U.S. manufacturing.