Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years and seven months until her death in January 1901.
On this day, the 24 of May, 1819, Alexandrina Victoria was born in Kensington Palace, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. In June 1837, less than a month after turning 18, Her Majesty became the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and her reign of more than six decades, known as the Victorian era, was a period marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.
Queen Victoria was the daughter of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who, along with his father, died in 1820. She inherited the throne after her father’s three elder brothers, including her predecessor King William IV, died without surviving legitimate issue.
Her Royal Highness married her first cousin Prince Albert in 1840. The couple’s children later married into royal and noble families in Europe, thereby earning Queen Victoria the sobriquet “the grandmother of Europe”. She died on the Isle of Wight in 1901, and was succeeded by her son Edward VII.
To this day, Canada is the only country in the world to celebrate the late monarch’s birthday on the federal public holiday, known as Victoria Day. Australia, on the other hand, celebrates the Queen in a localised event which marks the founding of the state of Victoria on 1 July.
