1. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born in Corfu, Greece on June 10 1921. His parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, and Princess Alice of Battenberg. (She may or may not have had anything to do with the cakes of the same name.)
2. The Prince is a member of the catchily named House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. He and his wife, the Queen, are second cousins, once removed, and share a great-great-grandmother in Queen Victoria.
3. The inhabitants of some villages in Vanuatu – a tiny island nation in the South Pacific, population 225,000 – worship Prince Philip as a god. True fact. The island people have portraits of the Prince and celebrate his birthday with special feasts.
4. His Royal Highness Phil learned to fly planes way back in 1952. By his 70th birthday, 21 years ago, he’d managed to log 5,150 pilot hours. He was also a keen polo player in his youth and helped develop the rules for the obscure upper class sport of carriage driving.
5. For his 90th birthday, the Queen appointed him Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy, which is a great present, though sources close to Prince Philip reveal he would have much preferred an Xbox.
And now a self-tweeted picture of Kim Kardashian’s gigantic booty…
