She doesn’t have a passport
Despite being history’s most widely traveled head of state—she
has reportedly visited 116 countries during her 60-year reign—
Elizabeth does not hold a passport. Since all British passports are
issued in the queen’s name, she herself doesn’t need one. She also
doesn’t require a driver’s license, though she has been known to
take joyrides around her various estates in her Range Rover.
She has two different birthdays
The reigning British monarch was born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary
of York on April 21, 1926. However, each Commonwealth country
traditionally celebrates her birthday on a designated day in May or
June. In the United Kingdom, for instance, it falls on the first,
second or third Saturday in June. Britain has officially marked its
sovereign’s birthday since 1748, when the event was merged
with the annual “Trooping the Colour” ceremony and parade.
Elizabeth spends her real birthday enjoying private festivities with
her family.
She drove a truck during World War II
After months of begging her father to let his heir pitch in, Elizabeth
—then an 18-year-old princess—joined the Women’s Auxiliary
Territorial Service during World War II. Known as Second
Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor, she donned a pair of coveralls and
trained in London as a mechanic and military truck driver. The
queen remains the only female member of the royal family to
have entered the armed forces and is the only living head of state
who served in World War II.
She paid for her wedding dress with ration coupons
Princess Elizabeth married her third cousin Philip Mountbatten,
formerly prince of Greece and Denmark, on November 20, 1947.
Held during the postwar recovery years, their wedding was a
relatively understated affair, at least compared to the lavish union
of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in July 1981. With
austerity measures still in effect, Elizabeth had to save up ration
coupons to purchase the material for her wedding dress, an ivory
satin gown designed by Norman Hartnell and encrusted with
10,000 white pearls.
She didn’t take her husband’s name
Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was born into the House of Saxe-
Coburg and Gotha, but during World War I the family name was
changed to Windsor amid anti-German sentiment. Similarly, her
husband Prince Philip dropped his father’s Germanic surname,
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and adopted that of
his maternal grandparents, Mountbatten, during their
engagement. But when Elizabeth ascended the throne, her mother
and Prime Minister Winston Churchill did everything in their
power to prevent the queen and her line from becoming the
House of Mountbatten. They succeeded, but several years later
Elizabeth proclaimed that some of her descendants would carry
the name Mountbatten-Windsor—probably in an attempt to
placate her fuming husband.
She sent an email in 1976
On March 26, 1976, Queen Elizabeth sent her first email while
taking part in a network technology demonstration at the Royal
Signals and Radar Establishment, a research facility in Malvern,
England. The message was transmitted over ARPANET, the
forerunner of the modern Internet. She is considered the first head
of state to have used electronic mail.
She was shot at by a teenager.
During her birthday celebration on June 13, 1981, shots rang out as
Elizabeth rode her horse in a parade near Buckingham Palace.
Marcus Sarjeant, a 17-year-old who idolized the assassins of John
F. Kennedy and John Lennon, had fired six blank shots in the
queen’s direction. Swiftly subdued by police, the teen would
spend three years in a psychiatric prison. Elizabeth, meanwhile,
merely calmed her startled horse and resumed her procession.
She once woke up to find a stalker in her bedroom.
On July 9, 1982, a 31-year-old psychiatric patient named Michael
Fagan scaled a Buckingham Palace drainpipe and sauntered into
Elizabeth’s chambers. The sleeping monarch awoke to find a
strange man perched on the edge of her bed, dripping blood from
where he had cut his hand while wandering the palace’s dark
corridors. Initially unable to reach the police, Elizabeth engaged
Fagan in conversation for at least 10 minutes, listening to him chat
about his personal problems and relationship with his four
children. Finally, a footman roused from his slumber seized the
loquacious intruder. It turned out that Fagan, who was ordered to
spend six months in a mental hospital, had also crept into the
royal residence weeks earlier, making off with a bottle of Prince
Charles’ white wine.