This date in 1900 saw the birth of The Queen Mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon. 10 facts about her:
Her full name at birth was the Honourable Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon. Her father was Lord Glamis, later 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. Her actual place of birth isn’t known. There are several possible locations, including in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to a hospital.
She was home schooled until she was eight, after which she went to school in London. Her best subjects were literature and scripture.
The Bowes-Lyon family seat was Glamis Castle, once the home of Macbeth.
During the first world war, Glamis Castle was made into a hospital. Elizabeth, then a teenager, used to help out. One soldier who was quite taken with her wrote these prophetic words in her autograph book: "Hung, drawn, & quartered ... Hung in Diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and quartered in the best house in the land."
When her future husband Prince Albert first proposed, she turned him down. Nobody knows why, possibly because she didn’t fancy the constant scrutiny of being a member of the royal family. The rejection led to her being visited by his mother, Queen Mary, who was certain Elizabeth was “the One” for her son. Even so, Elizabeth turned down another proposal from Prince Albert before finally agreeing to marry him on 26th April 1923 at Westminster Abbey. She did something unexpected at her wedding. She laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on her way into the abbey, in memory of her brother Fergus who’d been killed in the war.
The couple spent their honeymoon at Polesdon Lacey, a house in Surrey owned by her friend Margaret Greville, now owned by the National Trust. The couple also spent some time in Scotland, where Elizabeth went down with whooping cough.
She was known for her love of Horses and horse racing. Another of her favourite hobbies was fishing. On a royal visit to New Zealand, she went fishing in the Bay of Islands. In 1982, Elizabeth was rushed to hospital when a Fish bone became stuck in her throat, and calmly joked afterwards, "The Salmon have got their own back."
She became known as “The Queen Mother” because the usual naming style for the widow of a king would be “Queen Elizabeth” which was deemed too similar to the title of her daughter, “Queen Elizabeth II”.
When war broke out in 1939, it was suggested that the Queen and her daughters should evacuate to North America or Canada. She replied: 'The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave.' So they stayed. Adolph Hitler is said to have called her "the most dangerous woman in Europe" because he viewed her popularity as a threat to German interests.
She was the last Empress of India, a title which became obsolete when the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947. She was the first Lady of the Thistle, a title given to her by her husband, and was the first British monarch to reach 100 years of age.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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