The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain married her distant cousin, Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark who renounced his titles in order to marry the wildly popular princess.

He was made duke of Edinburgh on the eve of the wedding, while the marriage itself raised the spirits of the British people, who remained mired in economic hardship after the end of the Second World War.

Death of King George

On February 6, 1952, while on a goodwill tour of Kenya, the couple learned that Elizabeth’s father, King George the Sixth, had died. First in line for succession to the thrown, Elizabeth would become the Queen of England at the tender age of 27.

After three months in seclusion to mourn the loss of her father, on June the second, 1953, more than 1,000 dignitaries and guests attended Elizabeth’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, while hundreds of millions listened on radios and for the first time in history watched the proceedings on live TV.

After the ceremony, millions of rain-soaked spectators cheered the queen and her husband, as they passed along a five-mile procession route in a gilded horse-drawn carriage. After more than six decades of rule, Queen Elizabeth II’s popularity remains as strong as ever. She has traveled more extensively than any other British king or queen, as well as the first British monarch to visit South America and the Persian Gulf countries.

Indisputably one of the wealthiest women in England, in 1992, Elizabeth agreed to pay income tax, making her the first monarch in over a thousand years of royal lineage to do so.