TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Queen Elizabeth's 96th birthday marked with gun salutes
Change Size
Royal serenade: The Band of the Coldstream Guards (left), play “Happy Birthday” to mark the 96th birthday of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday, alongside the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards during the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Windsor Castle. (AFP/Pool/Jonathan Brady)
Q
ueen Elizabeth celebrated her 96th birthday at Sandringham House on Thursday as gun salutes rang out across London and Windsor and military bands played "Happy Birthday".
The United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch, who celebrates a historic platinum jubilee this year, was pictured with two white ponies in a photo released for the occasion.
Government ministers joined members of the royal family in sending their best wishes to the queen, who has stepped back from most public duties this year over concerns about her health.
She has traveled from Windsor Castle, west of London, to spend her birthday at her estate in Sandringham, Norfolk.
"An inspiration to so many across the UK, the Commonwealth and the world, it's particularly special to be celebrating in this Platinum Jubilee year," her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate wrote on Twitter.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is visiting India, wished the queen a happy birthday and paid a "heartfelt tribute" in a video message to her "70 years of dedicated and faultless service to our country and the Commonwealth".
Toy maker Mattel launched a commemorative Barbie doll of the queen, dressed in an ivory gown with a blue sash and wearing her wedding tiara, to mark the jubilee.
Elizabeth became the queen of Britain and more than a dozen other realms, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, on the death of her father King George VI on Feb. 6, 1952 while she was in Kenya on an international tour.
The news was broken to her by her husband Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99 after more than seven decades by her side.
When she ascended the throne, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Harry Truman were respectively running the Soviet Union, China and the United States, while Winston Churchill was the British prime minister.
Elizabeth has largely avoided the public spotlight after spending a night in hospital in October for an unspecified ailment and being ordered to rest. She tested positive for COVID-19 in February, and has said she was left very tired.
She has missed events, including the Remembrance Sunday gathering and Easter service, but she joined members of her family and dignitaries at a memorial service for her husband at London's Westminster Abbey last month.
