Interesting things about Prince Philip!

Prince Philip passed away on April 9 last year, just a few months before his 100th birthday.

Even before he married the British Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh had many family ties with the royal families on the Old Continent. Namely, his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was the great-granddaughter of the famous British Queen Victoria, and his father was Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. He was also further related to the heirs of the Prussian kings and the heirs of the Romanov family. Stay tuned below if you want to know more fascinating facts from the life of Prince Philip.

Prince Philip's family was forced to leave Greece

After the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the abdication of the Greek King Constantine I, Philip's uncle, he was forced to leave Greece with his family. They were evacuated from this country by the British cruiser Calypso, which transported them to France. Prince Philip lived in Paris until he was seven.

Prince Philip met Queen Elizabeth II when she was 13 years old

In 1939, Prince Philip joined the British Royal Navy. In the same year, the royal family visited Dartmouth, where he was stationed. The then Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI, asked him to keep her daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, company during this visit. From that moment on, Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth began exchanging letters, and eight years later they got married.

He had a pilot's license

Prince Philip did equally well on the high seas and in the sky. Namely, in 1953, he completed the training for pilots of aircraft of the Royal Air Force. He received a helicopter license in 1956, and since 1959 he has been able to fly private planes. After flying his last flight in 1997 (when he was 76), Prince Philip had 6,000 hours behind him as a pilot of as many as 59 different aircraft.

A tribe from an island in the Pacific Ocean considers him a deity

The people of the village located on the island of Tanna in the Pacific state of Vanuatu, believe that Prince Philip is a god. Members of this tribe worship his portraits and celebrate his birthday with great pomp. Prince Philip hosted representatives of these people in his home in London several times and exchanged gifts and photographs with them.

Prince Philip had the longest life of all the men of the royal family

Only Queen Elizabeth, mother of Elizabeth II, and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, lived longer than him. The first was 101 at the time of her death in 2002, while Alice passed away in 2004, three months before her 103rd birthday. Prince Philip is also the owner of another record. Namely, his marriage to Queen Elizabeth II, which lasted as long as 73 years, is the longest in the history of the British royal family.