1 July: Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana, Princess of Wales would have been 60 years old today. 10 things you might not know about the woman known as The People's Princess:

1. She was the fourth of five children of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his first wife Frances. She had two sisters, Sarah (now Lady Sarah McCorquodale) and Jane (now Lady Jane Fellowes), and a younger brother, Charles Spencer (now the Earl Spencer). Another brother, John Spencer, died hours after his birth in January 1960. She was named Diana Frances, after her mother and her distant relative Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford.
2. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
3. She may have been referred to often as "Princess Diana" but that was never an official title. Only a princess by blood may be styled with her name after the title. Princesses by marriage are styled by their husband’s name after the title, so the correct way to refer to her would have been "Princess Charles". Diana’s official title during her marriage was “Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales”.
4. She wanted to be a ballerina, but grew too tall, at 5 feet 10 inches. Nevertheless she maintained her interest in dance and was a patron of dance companies. She even arranged to dance on stage to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl at a Christmas gala as a surprise. Prince Charles, however, was not amused.
5. She first met Prince Charles at a party at the Spencer family’s Althorp estate. He was going out with her sister Sarah at the time. This was in 1977. They met again three years later through a mutual friend. Diana, then 19, expressed her sympathy at the loss of his great uncle, who’d been assassinated by the IRA the previous year. Charles was moved by what she said, and it sparked his interest.
6. Before she became a princess, Diana worked as a nursery assistant at the Young England Kindergarten school in Pimlico, a Montessori school.
7. Diana was the first British citizen to marry the heir to the throne since 1660. The last woman to hold this title was Anne Hyde, daughter of an advisor to Charles II. Royal marriages tended to be arranged for political reasons. Anne and Charles married in secret and since she was a Catholic, was nowhere near as popular as Diana would be. While it is becoming the norm now for royals to marry for love, Charles and Diana only met 13 times before they married, and even then they were rarely alone.
8. Diana had a collection of Teddy bears in her bedroom. She often received them as gifts.
9. She was a second cousin once-removed to American actor Oliver Platt and seventh cousin to Humphrey Bogart. Diana's stepmother, Raine, was the daughter of author Barbara Cartland. They didn't get on, however, and she and her sisters used to refer to their stepmother as "Acid Raine".
10. She was a big fan of ABBA and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. When she met its star, Tim Curry, she thanked him for making the film. She was friends with both Elton John and Freddie Mercury. According to one tale, she once visited a gay bar with Freddie dressed as a man and enjoyed a night out without being recognised.

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