10 June: Prince Philip

Prince Philip would have been 100 years old today. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born on the kitchen table at the summer retreat of the Greek royal family, Mon Repos, on the island of Corfu. In Greece at the time, they were still using the Julian calendar, so in his home country his birthday was 28 May, but the rest of the world was using the Gregorian calendar and the date everywhere else was 10 June.
2. He was the son of Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria (making him a distant cousin of the Queen), and her husband Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. When he was born he was sixth in line to the Greek throne. His his father’s family’s name was Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
3. Philip's uncle, Constantine I, was forced to abdicate after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22, and his entire family had to go into exile. The baby Philip was carried onto the HMS Calypso, the British ship sent to evacuate them, in an Orange crate. The family had connections with the Mountbatten family in England, which is why the family ended up there, and why Philip started using their surname.
4. He was educated at schools in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom and was a good student, described by one of his teachers as a “know-it-all smarty person.” After school, he attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, and it was here that he first met his future wife during a royal visit to the college in 1939. He was given the job of showing Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret around. Princess Elizabeth was just 13 at the time. To begin with, they were pen pals, but as the Princess grew up, romance blossomed.
5. According to Time Magazine, King George VI disapproved of the romance at first, not least because of his family connections with Nazi Germany (his sisters had both married Nazis), but possibly also because he came across as a brash young sailor. However, his daughter eventually persuaded him and he gave permission for the engagement in 1946, but with the condition that they delayed the announcement until the future Queen reached 21. Philip's Nazi sisters were not invited to the wedding.
6. Prince Philip's family background has led some to claim that he was a Nazi himself, but as a member of the British Royal Navy, he fought the Nazis in the second world war. He served as a midshipman aboard a superdreadnought battleship, HMS Ramillies, and quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy’s history at the age of just 21. He was also an accomplished pilot. Not only did he earn his RAF wings in 1953, but he also had a licence to fly Helicopters and a private pilot’s license. During his lifetime he amassed almost 6000 hours of flying experience, in 59 different types of aircraft.
7. He was the first member of the British Royal Family to be interviewed on TV (Panorama, in 1961) and the first to cross the Antarctic Circle (while on a diplomatic mission in 1957). He was the longest lived male royal in history and the third longest lived overall. His marriage to Queen Elizabeth II was the longest royal marriage in history, at 73 years. His pet name for the Queen, incidentally, was "Cabbage". This probably came from mon petit chou, a French for “my darling,” but the literal translation is “my little cabbage”.
8. Some of his lesser known hobbies include carriage driving (he helped to establish the rules for the sport and wrote a book about it), which he took up at the age of 50 when he decided he was too old to play polo; and painting and jewellery design. On his 90th birthday there was an exhibition of his work which included including a bracelet for his wife, stained-glass windows for Windsor Castle and a painting of the Queen reading a newspaper.
9. He was concerned about the environment even in the 1960s and started driving an electric car because of concerns about pollution. While he favoured plain and simple food, he was always willing to try new dishes. However, there was one thing he didn't like which hosting chefs would always be warned about—oysters. The Queen isn't keen on them, either. He was also said to prefer Gin and Tonic or Lager to Champagne.
10. There is a group of people in the island nation of Vanuatu who worship Prince Philip as a god. They believe he was the incarnation of a mountain god who travelled to find a powerful woman to marry.

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