FUN FACTS ABOUT THE LATE QUEEN ELIZABETH

1) The late Elizabeth married her third-cousin Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey in 1947, eight years after the two connected in 1939 when 13-year-old Elizabeth took a trip with her parents and sister to Britannia Royal Naval College, where Philip, 18, was a cadet. 

They were married for 73 years before the husband died last year April, just weeks shy of his 100th birthday 

The queen is survived by her four children Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

2) When Elizabeth was born in 1926, she wasn’t expected to ever take the throne. Her father, King George VI, was the second son in his family and only became monarch after his brother King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 in order to marry divorced American Wallace Simpson, leaving 10-year-old Elizabeth as heir presumptive. 

A year after her father’s death in 1952, Elizabeth was crowned queen at age 25 and spent nearly three-quarters of her life on the throne.

3) Elizabeth was born in 1926 in Mayfair, London, part of the British royal family on her father’s side and from an aristocratic Scottish family on her mother’s. At the time of her birth, Elizabeth’s paternal grandfather, King George V, was on the throne and she was third in the line of succession. 

The family nicknamed her “Lilibet,” which is what the queen initially called herself as a child when she couldn’t pronounce “Elizabeth.” Her only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930, and the two remained close until Margaret’s death in 2002. 

4) Elizabeth was the longest-serving head of state in the world at the time of her death, as well as the oldest British monarch and the ruler with the longest reign in the country’s history.

She sat on the throne during 15 British prime ministers’ time in office, starting with Winston Churchill’s second term, and met 13 U.S. presidents, each one since President Harry Truman with the exception of President Lyndon B. Johnson.