July 29: Charles and Diana's Wedding

On this date in History .... July 29, 1981:

Prince Charles of England weds Lady Diana Spencer.  

Tagged as The Wedding of the Century, it was watched by an estimated 750 million people around the world, making it the most popular program ever broadcast. 

3500 guests waited in the cathedral to watch the historic event.  Estimates ranging from 600,000 to two million spectators lined the streets with 4000 policeman to control the crowds. 

The wedding gown, which barely fit into the coach that drove the bride to the church, had 10,000 pearls.  The 25-foot train was longer than any other train worn by any royal English wedding bride, before or since. (Queen Elizabeth’s train was 13 feet long.)

A video that begins with Diana disembarking from the Glass Carriage to begin the long walk down the aisle at the cathedral can be seen by clicking HERE.

After she became Princess of Wales, Diana automatically became the “third highest ranked woman in the United Kingdom Order of Precedence, after the Queen and the Queen Mother.” 

Trivia from www.history.com:

• Diana was the first British citizen to marry the heir to the English throne in 300 years, the last being Anne Hyde who married future King James II in 1660 (while seven months pregnant). 

• Coincidentally, Diana’s son, William, became the first heir to marry a commoner since King James II in 1660.  (Diana was not a commoner; she came from an old English noble family.  Before the wedding her courtesy title was Lady Diana Spencer.)

• Charles and Diana were the first British royal couple to omit the word “obey” from their wedding vows.

• Charles forgot to seal his vows with a kiss at the altar but the couple established a new royal tradition of giving a public kiss on the balcony after the wedding. The tradition was continued with Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, and with Prince William and Kate Middleton.

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April 29: Liberation of Dachau

On this date in History ..... 1945:

The U.S. Seventh Army liberated Dachau, the first concentration camp established just five weeks after Hitler became Chancellor. 

The pile of shoes found by American
soldiers when they entered Dachau.
Photo source: www.theholocaustexplained.org 

American soldiers encountered 30 railroad cars of dead bodies in various stages of decomposition as they neared the camp. Once inside the camp, they found more dead bodies and 30,000 survivors. The story goes that the Americans were so enraged at what they found, that 30 SS guards were machine-gunned down. 

The civilian townspeople of Dachau were forced to come to the camp and see what was going on right next to them. They then had to bury over 9000 of the dead.  (See this blog for more on the story of bringing neighboring civilians to see these camps: www.scrapbookpages.com ).

Incomplete records indicated over 32,000 people died in the camps of Dachau.  (To put this in perspective, my hometown had a population of approx. 36,000 in 2012. Can you imagine going home one day and finding out the entire town had been killed?)   

While the liberation of this camp was going on, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were having a wedding ceremony. They committed suicide the next day.

And in case you missed the big headline:  Prince William and Kate Middleton decided to get married on Adolph and Eva's wedding date.  How did the royal wedding planners miss THAT piece of trivia?

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