Interesting Facts

9th June 62 – Claudia Octavia commited suicide. 68 - Roman Emperor Nero commited suicide. 1934 – Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen. 1958 – Queen Elizabeth II officially opened London Gatwick Airport, (LGW). 1975 - BBC radio broadcast the first live transmission from the House of Commons. 1978 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons) opened its priesthood to "all worthy men", ending a 148-year-old policy excluding black men. 1985 – Thomas Sutherland was kidnapped in Lebanon (he was not released until 1991). 1999 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) signed a peace treaty.

19th May 1499 – Catherine of Aragon, was married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine was just 13 and Arthur 12. 1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, was beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest. 1568 – Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the arrest of Mary Queen of Scots. 1649 – An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth was passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years. 1890 – Ho Chi Minh, the1st President of Vietnam was born. 1897 – Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Prison. 1943 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the cross-English Channel landing (D-Day). It would be delayed over a month due to bad weather. 1962 - Marilyn Monroe sang "that" birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, New York City. 1984 – Poet John Betjeman, who had been B...

13th June 1249 – Alexander III was crowned King of Scotland. 1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns. 1625 – King Charles I married French princess Henrietta Maria de Bourbon. 1774 – Rhode Island became the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves. 1886 - Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 buildings in Vancouver. 1912 - Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from an airplane. 1934 – Adolf Hitler and Benitto Mussolini met in Venice. Mussolini later described the German dictator as "a silly little monkey". 1970 – "The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' last Number 1 song. 1977 – James Earl Ray, the convicted murderer of Martin Luther King Jr. was recaptured after escaping from prison three days before. 1980 - The U.N. Security Council called for South Africa to free Nelson Mandela 1981 – At the Trooping of...

100-year-old Margaret Jacobs has celebrated her birthday on the wrong day for almost a century. (The mistake only came to light when the centenarian received a telegram for her hundredth birthday from the Queen. Mrs Jacobs, from Treuddyn, Flintshire, had been celebrating every April 24th, but her birth certificate says she was actually born four days later on April 28th. Mrs Jacobs' daughter, Olivia Santos, said: "We think when my grandfather went to register my mother's birth, and they put on the date of registration." So, really she's been celebrating the right day, and the Queen got it wrong.)

The Queen has dropped out of the top 300 in the Sunday Times Rich List, for the first time. (The richest man in Britain is Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik with a fortune of £13.17bn! The Queen had been in the Rich List every year since she actually topped the first list in 1989, but you need a personal fortune of £100m to become one of the 1,000 richest people in the country. That's up £15m compared with the entry point of £85m in 2014. In 1997 it took a fortune of just £15m to join Britain's richest 1,000 people. Did I just say just £15m? Ridiculous!)

The Queen sent her first Tweet at the Science Museum on 24th October 2014. (At 11:35 am she removed a glove as she pressed "Post" to tweet ""It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R," using the @BritishMonarchy account. By 11:39 am she had her first troll who wrote: "Welcome to Twitter. Abdicate!" I wonder if she blocked him / her.)

On the day the Royal Mail is privatised I think it's timely to remind everyone that even the great white shark Margaret Thatcher refused to flog off the Royal Mail. (Her reason was she wasn't prepared to privatise the Queen's head. In a YouGov poll in July 2013, two-thirds of British adults opposed the privatisation of the Royal Mail. Nice to know that the Tories are listening to the common people.) !Update - Three months on from privatisation, shares are trading around 561p, 70% higher than the original price of 330p.  (I'm still glad I didn't buy any.)

A speech drafted by British civil servants in 1983, was supposed to be read out in the event of nuclear war. (The Queen would have delivered the speech if Britain found itself on the verge of nuclear war.  So, we would have all felt much, much better as we evaporated in a cloud of nuclear dust. I'm very glad she never had to use it.)

The Queen has received a £5m pay rise from the British taxpayer. (Under a new payment system, called the sovereign grant, which replaces the old funding system of the civil list and grants-in-aid, the Queen now receives 15% of the profits from the Crown Estate. Between 2011 and 2012 the Crown Estate made a profit of £240.2m. Just remember - We're all in this together.)

Have you ever wondered who owns what in the UK?  Well, the Crown Estate owns quite a bit.  It is a property business valued at more than £8 billion. (The property it manages is owned by the Crown, but is not the private property of the monarch, and it's huge. So what "property" is this? Well it includes virtually the entire seabed of the UK, out to about 12 nautical miles, as well as around half of the foreshore of the UK. The rural estate comprises agricultural, mineral and forestry estates in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as residential and commercial property. The Crown Estate's urban portfolio comprises a wide and varied mix of properties including Regent Street in London. The Windsor Estate covers approximately 6,400 hectares and includes Windsor Great Park, the Home Park of Windsor Castle, forests, residential and commercial properties, golf courses, a racecourse and farms. If you want to see what is owned where, look at the Estates Map .) ...

According to research carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research 38% of women in the 1950s married men richer and better-educated than themselves, but today that percentage is just 16%. (The study found that women in the UK are increasingly marrying ‘beneath themselves’ by opting for men of lower social classes. 28 per cent of women born between 1976 and 1981 married men who were less educated and worse paid than them. In 1958, the figure for the same age group was 23 per cent. Of the women born between 1976 and 1981, only 16 per cent married up and more than half (56 per cent) married someone of the same class, defined by the IPPR as someone in a similar occupation. One example used is the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips who married former England rugby player Mike Tindall. The one thing this study really proves though is how class concious the UK still is.) Source

According to a "power list" compiled by BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour, the Queen is Britain’s most powerful woman. (The top five movers and shakers were: home secretary Theresa May, Santander boss Ana Botin, Supreme Court judge Baroness Brenda Hale and businesswoman Elisabeth Murdoch. You can read the full list of 100 women here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb/features/power-list I am proud to say, I didn't make the list.  I am not a mover and shaker, more a nudger and poker.)

It is an offence to intentionally injure, take or kill a wild swan in the UK. (As native wild birds, swans enjoy statutory protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 It is an offence to take or possess the egg of a wild mute swan, or to damage or destroy the nest of a mute swan whilst in use or being built.  I am writing this because one of my visitors asked me if the Queen really ate swan, and yes it seems there is an internet myth that all swans belong to the Queen, this is not true, however it is true that certain swans in certain areas are her majesty's property.  Every July a head-count of all the mute swans on the Thames is taken, this is called the Swan Upping ceremony.  They are then marked for ownership either by the Crown or by the Vintners' and Dyers' Livery Companies, which were granted their rights of ownership by the Crown in the fifteenth century.)

If her hubby isn't with her, Kate Middleton will have to curtsey to the blood princesses, including the cats in the hats, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. (The Queen’s updated protocol — the “Order of Precedence in the Royal Household” — stipulates that if Wills (a.k.a. the Duke of Cambridge) is in the room, Kate need only curtsey to the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and, believe it or not, Charles’s wife, Camilla. The Daily Mail sets out the palace rankings as follows: The Queen; Prince Philip; Prince of Wales; Duchess of Cornwall; Prince William; Prince Harry; the Duke of York; the Duchess of Cambridge; the Earl of Wessex; the Countess of Wessex; the Princess Royal; the Duke of Gloucester; the Duchess of Gloucester; the Duke of Kent; the Duchess of Kent; Princess Alexandra. Further, as commoners (like most of the planet), Kate’s parents have not — by virtue of their daughter’s marrying “up” — become members of the Royal Family, as under a “blood Royal” rule, only the chil...

According to research commissioned by soap firm Radox, the Queen has shaken half a million hands. (The average number of hands your typical Brit will shake is 670 for men and 304 for women, but to be honest, since I moved to Germany I've probably shaken as many hands as the Queen. They do like a good handshake here.) Source

There's a new £50 note in the UK from today. (It is the first time the UK has launched a new note in 17 years. The note features the queen on the front and for the first time ever, there are two characters on the reverse side; Bolton and Watt, two Victorian inventors who played a huge role in the industrial revolution. The note also has new features to prevent fraud, a broken green line that runs from top to bottom, and which contains images of the £ symbol and the number 50. When the note is tilted up and down the images move from side to side. Now if they could have made the queen do a shimmy, that would have been something to celebrate.)

The Queen has a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. (Yes, the British Monarchy have launched themselves onto the internet-based social networking site, and you will be able to find out what royal events are happening, but you won't be able to add The Queen as a "friend" or "poke" her.)

The Queen is the only over-75 in the UK who is not legally required to have a driver's licence in order to drive. (But, like others, she does have to fill out a form every three years declaring any medical conditions. I shouldn't think she does much driving though.)

The Queen is planning to create an underground network to extract heat from the earth’s natural warmth and cut energy bills at Buckingham Palace. (Well well!)

The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen. (I never knew that!)