Today in History: 2,5 billion people watched Princess Diana’s funeral
She was buried at Athorp House, after a funeral at Westminster Abbey.
An estimated 2,5 billion people around the globe tuned in to television broadcasts of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died a week earlier at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
During her 15-year marriage to Prince Charles, the son of Queen Elizabeth II and the heir to the British throne, Diana became one of the most famous, most photographed people on the planet. Her life story was fodder for numerous books, television programmes and movies, and her image appeared on countless magazine covers.
Diana Spencer was born on 1 July 1961, in Norfolk, England. On 29 July 1981, at the age of 20, ‘Shy Di’ – as the voracious British media dubbed her – married Prince Charles at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, in a ceremony that was watched by hundreds of millions of TV viewers around the world.
On 21 June 1982, Diana gave birth to Prince William. A second son, Prince Harry, was born on 15 September 1984. Charles and Diana separated in 1992, amidst allegations of infidelities on both sides, and the couple was officially divorced on 28 August 1996.
After her divorce, Diana continued the humanitarian work she’d begun as a member of the royal family. She would campaign to raise awareness of the deadly AIDS epidemic and to ban the use of landmines, or explosive devices planted on or in the ground that often cause death or injury to civilians.
In the early morning hours of 31 August 1997, the driver of Diana’s car lost control of the vehicle while reportedly trying to elude members of the paparazzi, and crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Diana’s companion, Dodi al-Fayed, was also killed in the crash, as was the driver, Henri Paul, who was later determined to have been speeding and under the influence of alcohol.
England experienced an unprecedented outpouring of public grief over Diana’s death. On 6 September 1997, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of London to watch the late princess’ coffin being transported to Westminster Abbey, where Elton John performed a re-worked version of his song, Candle in the Wind, which he and Bernie Taupin had originally written about Marilyn Monroe.
Diana’s brother, Lord Spencer, spoke at the funeral and blamed the media for his sister’s death, calling her the “most hunted person of the modern age”. Diana was buried at Althorp House, her family’s estate in Northamptonshire, England.
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