Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Celebrations News: Queen Elizabeth thanked all those involved in her Platinum Jubilee celebrations on Thursday, ahead of four days of pomp, parties, parades and public holidays to herald her record-breaking 70 years on the British throne. Tens of thousands of royal supporters lined the streets of London on Thursday to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee. The 96-year-old has reigned for longer than any of her predecessors. How to watch the Platinum Jubilee celebrations? A Sky News YouTube stream is broadcasting some of the events, while BBC is also covering the celebrations. In a special arrangement, ABC News is covering the jubilee celebrations on “Good Morning America” and “GMA3: What You Need to Know,” which will be broadcast live from London and Windsor, England. What is the schedule of events? The celebrations began Thursday with the Trooping the Colour military parade in central London, and for the first time Elizabeth took the salute from the 1,500 soldiers and officers from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Other senior royals, including son and heir Prince Charles, 73, and his eldest son Prince William, 39, will carry out other ceremonial duties on her behalf. Her grandson Prince Harry, now living in Los Angeles with his American wife Meghan, was absent when the royal family gathered on the palace balcony to watch a fly-past by modern and historic Royal Air Force planes after the parade. There will also be gun salutes in London, across Britain and from Royal Navy ships at sea at midday, while in the evening beacons will be lit across the country and the Commonwealth, with the queen leading the lighting of the Principal Platinum Jubilee Beacon at her Windsor Castle home. Friday will see a thanksgiving service at London's St. Paul's Cathedral, and its 'Great Paul' bell - the largest in the country and dating back to 1882 - will be rung for the first time at a royal occasion since being restored last year after a mechanism broke in the 1970s. After the service, a reception will be held at London's Guildhall hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London. Members of the royal family will attend Epsom racecourse on June 4 as it stages the 243rd running of "The Derby" horse race. The queen, whose love of horse racing is well known and who is an owner and breeder of many horses, has been a regular attendee at the race in previous years. In the evening, a "Platinum Party at the Palace" concert will be staged at the front of Buckingham Palace. Those appearing include American R&B singer Alicia Keys, US singer Diana Ross and Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of hit musical "Hamilton". On Sunday, officials estimate more than 16,000 street parties will take place in Britain, and the British government says some 600 "Big Jubilee Lunches" will be held in 80 countries from Greenland to New Zealand. Celebrations will conclude with a pageant through the British capital. In the afternoon, a pageant will be held in central London with the Gold State Coach at its head that Elizabeth used on her coronation day in 1953. It has not been seen on the streets of the capital for 20 years. Organisers have said singer Ed Sheeran and more than 100 well-known figures from British cultural life will join some 10,000 performers and members of the armed forces for the parade, which will trace a route similar to that taken by the queen on the day of her coronation. Salman Rushdie among Indians to be honoured Salman Rushdie, the Mumbai-born author of the Booker Prize-winning novel 'Midnight's Children', leads a list of over 40 professionals and community champions of Indian-origin to be honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. Dr Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Sandeep Mahal, Professor Daljit Nagra and Dr Chithra Ramakrishnan are among those honoured with MBEs in the field of arts, culture and literature. Some facts about Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth was born at 17 Bruton St, London, her maternal grandparents' home, on April 21, 1926, and christened on May 29 that year in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace. She became heir apparent when her uncle, Edward VIII, abdicated on Dec. 11, 1936, and her father George VI became king. She was 10 years old. She married navy lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, a Greek prince, at London's Westminster Abbey on Nov. 20, 1947. They had four children: Prince Charles (born in 1948), Princess Anne (1950), Prince Andrew (1960) and Prince Edward (1964). Philip died in April 2021, aged 99. She ascended the throne on the death of her father on Feb. 6, 1952, while she was in Kenya on a royal tour. She was crowned on June 2, 1953 at Westminster Abbey, the first coronation to be televised. When she ascended the throne, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Harry Truman were leading the Soviet Union, China and the United States, while Winston Churchill was British prime minister. She has been served by 14 prime ministers. During her reign, there have been 14 U.S. presidents, all of whom she has met bar Lyndon Johnson. On Sept. 9, 2015, she surpassed the 63 years, 7 months, 2 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes that her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria spent on the throne to become the country's longest-reigning monarch in a line dating back to Norman King William the Conqueror in 1066. Elizabeth remains queen of 15 realms including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tuvalu.
