81 Facts about Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

1. Queen Elizabeth II is the fortieth monarch since William the Conqueror

2. She was born at 2.40am on April 21, 1926 at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair

3. During her reign she has undertaken more than 256 official overseas visits to 129 different countries

4. She has visited Australia 15 times, Canada 23 times, Jamaica six times and New Zealand ten times

5. The Queen has received many unusual gifts including jaguars, sloths, beaver, an elephant, pineapples, eggs, snail shells, maple trees and 7kg of prawns

6. She has sent around 100,000 telegrams to centenarians in the UK and the Commonwealth

7. The Queen has launched 23 ships

8. She has given out about 78,000 Christmas puddings to staff, continuing the custom of King George V and King George VI

9. The Queen sat for the first and only hologram portrait in 2003

10. She has met five astronauts at Buckingham Palace

11. There have been six Archbishops of Canterbury during the Queen's reign

12. She first visited a mosque in the UK in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire in July 2002

13. The Queen takes a keen interest in horse breeding. Horses bred at the Royal studs have won virtually every major race in Britain

14. She is a Patron of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. One of the Queen's birds is called Sandringham Lightning

15. The Queen's wedding ring was made from a nugget of Welsh gold which came from the Clogau St David's mine near Dolgellau

16. The Queen's real birthday is on April 21, but it celebrated officially in June

17. She has attended 34 Royal Variety performances

18. Since 1952, the Queen has conferred more than 387,700 honours and awards

19. She does not have, or need, a passport or a driving licence

20. At her birth the Queen was only third in line to the throne

21. Her early years were spent at 145 Piccadilly (now the Intercontinental Hotel at Hyde Park Corner)

22. She was instructed in religion by the Archbishop of Canterbury

23. She became a Girl Guide and was a strong swimmer

24. The Queen made her first public speech when she was 14

25. Aged 13, she was entertained to tennis and tea by an 18-year-old naval cadet, Prince Philip of Greece

26. Before she was 18, she was President of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

27. She first flew in an aeroplane in July 1945

28. She is the only British monarch in history properly trained to change a spark plug

29. On VE Day she and her sister slipped into the crowd to celebrate

30. Her first official overseas visit was to South Africa in 1947

31. She collected clothing coupons for her wedding dress

32. The Queen spent her honeymoon at Broadlands, Hampshire, and at Birkhall, Balmoral

33. She has four children and eight grandchildren

34. Prince Andrew and Prince Edward were the first children to be born to a reigning monarch since Queen Victoria had her family

35. Her grandchildren are Peter and Zara Phillips (b. 1977 and 1981); Prince William of Wales and Prince Henry of Wales (b. 1982 and 1984); Princess Beatrice of York and Princess Eugenie of York (b. 1988 and 1990); Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Wessex (b. 2003) and Viscount Severn (b.2007)

36. The Queen usually spends Christmas at Sandringham in Norfolk

37. She was in a remote part of Kenya when she received the news of her father's death and her own accession to the throne on Wednesday, February 6, 1952

38. The Coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953, and was broadcast on television for the first time - at the Queen's request

39. The first prime minister of her reign was Winston Churchill

40. In 1962 she paid an informal visit to the East End of London, visiting housing redevelopments in Bethnal Green and Stepney

41. The first film about the Royal Family was shown in 1969. It was watched by 23 million

42. In 1970, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh initiated a new practice - the “walkabout” - to allow them to meet as many people as possible

43. The Queen exercised her Royal prerogative in 1963 when she appointed Lord Home Prime Minister

44. In 1965, she made the first visit by a monarch to Germany for 52 years

45. She formally acknowledged Prince Charles as heir in 1969

46. She travelled 56,000 miles to celebrate her Silver Jubilee in 1977

47. The Queen has a bank account at Coutts & Co. There is a Coutts cash-dispensing machine in Buckingham Palace

48. She received the first female prime minister at Buckingham Palace in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher replaced James Callaghan as leader

49. The Queen was the first British Sovereign to travel to the Middle East in 1979

50. In February 1983, she opened the Jamaican Parliament in its 21st anniversary year of independence

51. When she opened the Scottish Parliament she called it "the threshold of a new constitutional age"

52. An era in Royal travel came to end on December 11, 1997, when the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned

53. On November 20 1992, fire broke out at Windsor Castle in the Queen's Private Chapel

54. She gave special permission for the American National Anthem to be played during the Changing of the Guard on September 14 2001

55. The Queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 2002, including visiting 70 cities and towns around the UK

56. Every year she attends the Derby at Epsom and the Summer Race Meeting at Ascot

57. She has made private visits to America to see stallion stations and stud farms in Kentucky

58. The Queen loves Scottish country dancing

59. Tony Blair was the first prime minister to be born during her reign, which has already seen nine prime ministers

60. The 1953 FA Cup Final was the first football game she attended

61. Peggy was the first horse that the young Elizabeth owned, a gift from her grandfather, George V, when she was four

62. The Queen has sat through 91 state banquets and posed for 139 official portraits

63. She has given the nation a Christmas message every year except 1969

64. She has been sent more than three million letters

65. 1.1 million people have attended her garden parties

66. She has performed the State Opening of Parliament every year except 1959 and 1963, when she was expecting Prince Andrew and Prince Edward respectively

67. She was the first British monarch to visit China, in 1986, and the first for 450 years to receive the Pope at Buckingham Palace

68. The Queen sent her first e-mail from an army base in 1976

69. The official Buckingham Palace website was set up in 1997

70. She first used the Underground in May 1939, when she travelled with her governess, Marion Crawford, and Princess Margaret

71. She has visited the sets of EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale

72. She is the first monarch to be awarded a gold disc from the recording industry

73. Her reign has been shared with more than 30 corgis, starting with one called Susan, a present for her 18th birthday in 1944

74. The Queen introduced a new breed of dog known as the "dorgi", when one of the corgis mated with a dachshund named Pipkin

75. She owns all the sturgeon, whales and dolphins in British waters, as well as 88 cygnets on the Thames

76. The Queen is the first British monarch to see three of her children divorce

77. She is the first sovereign to be forced to open Buckingham Palace to the public (in order to pay for the restoration of Windsor Castle after the fire of 1992)

78. She is the first monarch to cause an Old Bailey trial to be halted, despite being Paul Burrell's ultimate prosecutor as Head of State

79. She keeps her cornflakes in Tupperware boxes

80. She demoted a footman for feeding her corgis whisky

81. She owns the largest and finest private art collection in the world

February 27 1900

British Labour Party Forms

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist political party in the United Kingdom.

Labour surpassed the liberal party in general elections during the 1920's forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940-1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in Government from 1964-1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974-1979. first under Wilson and then under James Callaghan.

February 17 1776

1st Volume of Gibbon's "Decline & Fall of The Roman Empire" Published

British parliamentarian and soldier, Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) conceived of his plan for Decline and Fall while "Musing amid the ruins of the Capitol" on a visit to Rome. For the next 10 years he worked away at his great history, which traces the decadence of the late empire from the time of Antonies and the rise of Western Christianity. "The confusion of the times, and the scarcity of the authentic memorials, pose equal difficulties to the historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration," he writes. despite these obstacles, Decline and Fall remains a model of historical exposition, and required reading for students of European history.

February 16 1641

English King Charles I accepts Triennial Act

The Triennial Act 1641 (Also known as the Dissolution Act) was an act passed by the English Long Parliament, during the reign of King Charles I. The act requires that parliament meet for at least a fifty-day session once every three years. It was intended to prevent kings from ruling without parliament, as Charles had done between 1629 and 1640. If the king failed to call parliament, the act required the Lord Chancellor to issue the writs, and failing that, the house of lords could assemble and issue writs for the election of the house of commons. clause 11 was unusual because it explicitly stated that this bill would receive the royal assent before the end of the parliamentary session. at that time, bills did not customarily gain royal assent until after the end of the session. Thus, if clause 11 where not present, the act may have not come into force until the next parliament. 

February 10 1840

Queen Victoria Marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg

Queen Victoria was the Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20th June 1837 until her death. From May 1 1876 she used the additional title of Empress of India.

Victoria was the Daughter of Prince Edward, duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke of Kent and the King died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issues. She ascended to the Throne when the United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the Sovereign held relatively few direct political powers. Privately, she attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Publicly, she became a national icon, and was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their 9 children and 26 of their 42 grandchildren married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname "The Grandmother of Europe" After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. as a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the later half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees where times of public celebration.