10 Weirdest Facts About Queen Elizabeth II: Her Ties To Duke Ellington, The Beatles And Peppa Pig (But Not LBJ)

This week, the eyes of the world were on London as the U.K. celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Throughout her life, the Queen has been both a ubiquitous and elusive individual – she has been the most visible monarch in her nation’s history, but at the same time very few people can claim that they genuinely know her.

Indeed, the Queen’s reign has included some delightfully off-kilter incidents and issues that are barely known to the public. To celebrate her 70th year on the throne, here are 10 of the weirdest facts related to Elizabeth II.

The Unexpected Queen: Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was not supposed to become the reigning monarch – she was the first of two daughters born to Prince Albert and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Albert’s brother, Prince Edward, was the heir to the throne and succeeded their father, King George V, in January 1936 as Edward VIII.

Edward was still single when he became king, and it was expected that he would marry and have children who would follow him as monarch. But Edward fell in love with Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American divorcee, and abdicated the throne to marry her. Albert, who was never expecting to become the monarch, took the name of George VI, with his then 10-year-old daughter Elizabeth unexpectantly becoming heir to the throne.

The Money Queen: The monarch has a place in the Guinness World Records as the individual who appeared on the most currencies around the world: her image has graced the paper notes and coins of 33 countries and can still be found on the currencies of the Commonwealth nations Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The Queen first appeared on currency in 1935 when Canada featured the nine-year-old then-Princess Elizabeth on its $20 bill.

The Francophonic Royal: Elizabeth’s education was handled by private tutors and she never attended a formal school. But her education was hardly lacking and she excelled at French.

Unlike U.S. heads of state (some of whom engaged in a hazardous relationship with the English language), the Queen is fluent in French and relies on the language when meeting with French-speaking leaders.

The Queen And Duke: In 1958, the jazz great Duke Ellington met the Queen at a reception following the Leeds Music Festival. Ellington would later recall that he told the Queen “she was so inspiring and that something musical would come out of it. She said she would be listening, so I wrote an album for her.”

Working with pianist Billy Strayhorn, Ellington composed and recorded “The Queen’s Suite” in 1959. However, only a single record was pressed – which Ellington sent directly to Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s pleasure. The public would never get to hear “The Queen’s Suite” until 1976, two years after Ellington passed away.

Far Away From LBJ: The Queen has met every U.S. President from Harry S Truman to Joe Biden – with Lyndon B. Johnson being the only White House occupant she never met in person.

The Queen was pregnant with her fourth child, Prince Edward, at the time of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and was unable to attend his funeral – her husband, Prince Philip, represented the nation in her place. But after Edward’s birth, Johnson never extended an invitation to the Queen for a state visit, nor did he pause in London to meet with her during his overseas trips. Likewise, no invitation came to Johnson from Buckingham Palace.

But that’s not to say Johnson was anti-royal – he hosted the Queen’s glamorous sister, Princess Margaret, and her husband Lord Snowdon at the White House in 1965 (seen here).

From Brazil With Love: The Queen has been the most traveled monarch in her nation’s history, and she almost always received gifts from leaders that she met while crisscrossing the globe.

In 1968, she was on a week-long visit to Brazil and made such a strong impression on the Roman Catholic Prefect of Brasília that he presented her with three unlikely gifts: a pair of jaguars and a sloth. While the Queen had previously accepted animals as gifts – mostly horses, in tribute to her celebrated equestrian interests – she clearly could not keep the Brazilian wild animals at Buckingham Palace. Instead, she relocated them to the London Zoo, where they became popular attractions for many years.

A Beatles Tribute: The Queen is the only head of state to be the subject of a Beatles song – “Her Majesty” on the Beatles’ 1969 “Abbey Road” album is the band’s shortest (only 23 seconds) and was the only Beatles song not identified on an album record sleeve – it was a last-minute addition that was so hastily included that the final chord was accidentally cut.

Paul McCartney was the only Beatle involved in the song’s recording, in which he muses about how he needs to build up his nerve to tell her how much he loves her. McCartney had his chance in a June 2002 concert for the Queen that was staged during her Golden Jubilee celebrations.

The Digital Queen: Elizabeth has always been on the cutting edge of technology, starting with the introduction of television cameras to her 1953 coronation. In March 1976, she ventured into the barely-explored world of cyberspace by sending her first email during a visit to the Royal Radar Establishment. The email went to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and contained her greetings in opening the first U.S.-U.K. programming language collaboration.

As the Internet evolved, the Queen’s website for Buckingham Palace went live in 1997, and she sent her first tweet in 2014 and her first Instagram post in 2019. And during the pandemic, she continued her state functions via Zoom ZM.

The Award-Winning Queen: While Her Majesty distributed an endless number of knighthoods, medals and honors during her reign, she has not often been on the receiving end of the awards equation. In April 2013, she was presented with an honorary BAFTA Award by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for her support of the U.K.’s film and television industries – she has served as patron of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund and the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund.

Actor and filmmaker Sir Kenneth Branagh presented the Queen with the award at a Windsor Castle event, but BAFTA Chairman John Willis stole the show in describing her as "the most memorable Bond girl yet" – a cheeky reference to her surprise appearance opposite Daniel Craig’s 007 in a film that was broadcast during the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.

The Queen Meets Peppa Pig: Elizabeth II has been the subject of multiple dramatic interpretations, most notably Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance in the 2006 film “The Queen” and by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman in the Netflix NFLX series “The Crown.” But perhaps the most charming interpretation was the animated Elizabeth clone in the “Peppa Pig” cartoon series, where the eponymous porcine encourages the jolly monarch to have fun jumping in a mud hole.

Photo: The Queen's photos projected on Stonehenge, courtesy of English Heritage; photo of the 1935 Canadian currency courtesy of Navona Numismatics; photo of President Johnson with Princess Margaret courtesy of the National Archives