Britain’s Queen Elizabeth turns 94 with little birthday celebrations

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth turned 94 on Tuesday but the coronavirus lockdown meant there was little fanfare to mark the occasion.

Elizabeth, the world’s eldest and longest-reigning monarch, typically spends her birthday privately without much public celebration but this year the event will be even more muted.

Royal birthdays and anniversaries are traditionally marked by ceremonial gun salutes, in which blank rounds are fired from various locations across London, but the queen felt it would be inappropriate to allow this to go ahead given the circumstances.

Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952 at the age of 25, and surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria as Britain’s longest reigning monarch in September 2015.