The public's fascination with the life of Princess Diana is still alive and well today. Emma Corrin's recent portrayal of Lady-then-Princess Diana on Netflix's critically acclaimed drama series The Crown has revived famous past events of Di's life, and refueled rumors.
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00:00In the Netflix hit The Crown, there are a few facts that are left out of Princess Diana's
00:05story and some of them are too strange to not be talked about. Here are some of the
00:10strangest facts about Princess Diana.
00:14As The Crown alluded to in Season 4, Princess Diana's older sister, Sarah Spencer, did actually
00:20date Prince Charles several years before Diana caught his attention. According to Sarah Bradford,
00:25author of Diana, Finally! The Complete Story, the couple seemed like a good match at the
00:30time. Prince Charles enjoyed Sarah's sparkiness and irreverent wit, and they made each other
00:35laugh.
00:36The relationship is said to have fizzled out after Sarah gave a rather shocking interview
00:41in which she claimed she wouldn't marry the royal. However, it was thanks to this relationship
00:45that Diana and Charles first crossed paths. According to The Daily Times, Diana first
00:50met the prince in a plowed field in 1977 when she was just 16.
00:56Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles wasn't her family's first brush with the royal
01:00family. In fact, Diana's maternal grandmother, Lady Ruth Fermoy, worked as a lady-in-waiting
01:06to the Queen Mother, Charles' grandmother. According to Radio Times, Lady Fermoy began
01:11working for the royal family in 1956 and, over the years, became a close friend of the
01:16Queen Mother.
01:17In his famous biography of Diana, Diana, Her True Story, In Her Own Words, Andrew Morton
01:22revealed that Lady Fermoy's experience with the royals led her to caution her granddaughter
01:27about joining the family, telling her,
01:29"...you must understand that their sense of humor and lifestyle are very different, and
01:34I don't think it will suit you."
01:36"...I hope I don't need to tell you how fortunate you are to have been invited here, how unique
01:42an opportunity this is."
01:44Once the marriage began to crumble, Lady Fermoy reportedly took Charles' side. As Robert Runcie
01:50told the Times in 1996,
01:52"...she was totally and wholly a Charles person, because she's seen him grow up, loved him
01:58like all the women at court do, and regarded Diana as an actress, a schemer."
02:03It must have been difficult for Diana to feel that even her own grandmother wasn't an ally.
02:08Before she became Princess Diana, she was simply Diana Spencer, a relatively normal,
02:13albeit privileged, British schoolgirl. In fact, she even won a pretty funny award as
02:17a kid. Diana is said to have won an At School Award for taking good care of her guinea pig.
02:23As W reported, the Princess-to-be was pretty obsessed with guinea pigs as a kid. She participated
02:28in several pet shows at Sandringham, her childhood home. In 1972, she reportedly won both first
02:34and second prize. Her guinea pig, Peanuts, also came with her to boarding school. She
02:39even was named head of Pets Corner, where the students' pets lived.
02:43While Diana's guinea pig obsession may seem a little strange,
02:46it was actually an early sign of her famously caring, empathetic nature.
02:51Before Diana married into the royal family, she had a surprisingly normal job. You may be
02:56surprised to learn that the princess actually worked at a nursery school in London as a part-time
03:01kindergarten teacher. She worked at the school until her engagement to Prince Charles, and it
03:06was during this period that she began to be hounded by the press.
03:09"'Have you any comments to make about that?'
03:15"'Don't comment on that.'"
03:16In the 2017 documentary The Diana Story, photographer Arthur Edwards explained how
03:21he searched a few different nurseries trying to find Diana. When he found the correct school,
03:26she came out for a quick photo with a few children. He recalled,
03:29"'She posed, and halfway through taking the photographs, the sun came out.'"
03:34While most fans of Princess Diana probably know that she and Prince Charles ended up being
03:39seriously mismatched, they may not realize just how significant their age gap was.
03:44When they became engaged, he was 32, while she was only 19. Looking back,
03:49it's clear that the couple's age difference meant they came from vastly different worlds.
03:53As an old employee of the royal household told The Sun,
03:56"'They didn't know each other, and at 19, you don't know your mind.
04:00They had nothing in common, and as time went by, that really showed."
04:03However, royal correspondent Stephen Bates told Time that the age gap was
04:08rarely questioned at the time of their engagement. But as Reader's Digest reported,
04:12people eventually accepted that the age gap was one of the main reasons that the marriage
04:17ultimately failed.
04:18"...and I suppose in love."
04:20"'Course."
04:22"'Whatever in love means. Well, you can put your own interpretation.'"
04:28Several infamous moments in Princess Diana's history didn't make it into the crown.
04:32One of these moments was her spur-of-the-moment dance with John Travolta. In 1985, during the
04:38royal couple's trip to the United States, they were invited to a gala dinner at the White House.
04:43Amongst the other guests were some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Travolta.
04:47As Paul Burrell, Diana's butler at the time, wrote in The Way We Were Remembering Diana,
04:52the princess hadn't actually been planning on dancing with Travolta. In fact,
04:56she'd been hoping to be partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous ballet dancer. However,
05:02Burrell wrote that,
05:03"...Nancy and Reagan set up the press to take a picture of her dancing with John Travolta."
05:07As Travolta reportedly recalled later, Diana had actually tried to lead the dance.
05:12Well, that's not going to happen. I've got to go back to my school days of learning ballroom
05:17dancing and show that I can lead her. Apparently, Travolta and Diana remained
05:21close friends after the chance encounter.
05:24It turns out dancing wasn't so foreign to the princess. She had dreamed of becoming
05:29a ballerina herself. As PopSugar reported, she'd fallen in love with ballet as a child
05:34and had hoped to dance professionally as a career. However, she eventually reached a
05:38height of 5'10", which was considered too tall. Nevertheless, the princess continued to take
05:43dance lessons even after marrying into the royal family. Her ballet teacher, Anne Allen, said,
05:49"...over time, as we went through our dance class, I realized just how much
05:53dance meant to her. She had dance in her soul."
05:57One seriously surprising fact about Princess Diana may come as a shock. The royal never
06:02officially graduated from high school. In fact, most of her school life was pretty unusual.
06:07According to The Washington Post, Diana was initially homeschooled by a governess
06:11before attending West Heath School in Kent. As Yahoo News reported, the princess made
06:16the decision to leave school at 16 after failing her O-levels twice,
06:20instead opting to attend a finishing school in Switzerland.
06:23While Diana may not have been academically gifted, she did show particular talent in the arts. She
06:29even won an award for being an extremely helpful student for her school and classmates, according
06:34to her official biography. Even though Diana didn't finish school, she made an effort when
06:38it came to her children's education. In fact, she ensured that unlike previous royals, her sons were
06:44educated in the school system. It turns out Princess Diana had a bit of a wild side. In one
06:50of her bolder moments, Diana reportedly sneaked into a gay bar with her friend Freddie Mercury,
06:55the lead singer of Queen. As actress Cleo Rockos revealed in her memoir, she, Mercury, and Diana
07:02had been close friends in the 80s. One evening, the trio had been hanging out. When Diana found
07:07out the other two were going out to the famous Royal Vauxhall Tavern, she asked if she could
07:11join them. Apparently, Rockos and Mercury were a little nervous about taking Diana to the well-known
07:17gay bar with Rockos writing,
07:19"...we pleaded, what would be the headline if you were caught in a gay bar brawl?"
07:23However, Diana was determined and dressed up in an army jacket, aviators, and a cap,
07:28apparently passing for a gay male model. As Rockos tells it,
07:32the three friends managed to spend an evening at the gay bar without being spotted.
07:37Princess Diana's gay bar venture wasn't the only time she sneaked out of the palace to
07:41have a little fun. Apparently, she also ducked out to a bar with her friend and soon-to-be
07:46sister-in-law, Sarah Ferguson. Sarah, who married Prince Andrew, reportedly joined Diana in trying
07:51to crash Andrew's stag party. As Diana's biographer Andrew Morton wrote in Diana, Her True Story,
07:57the pair dressed up as policewomen in an attempt to sneak into the party. When that failed,
08:02Morton said,
08:03"...the two friends drank champagne and orange juice at Annabelle's nightclub before returning
08:07to Buckingham Palace, where they stopped Andrew's car at the entrance as he returned home."
08:12At the time, the two women were mistaken for kiss-o-gram girls at the nightclub,
08:16thanks to their bizarre costumes. Louis Louis, the manager of the nightclub,
08:20told the Associated Press,
08:21"...they were perfectly disguised and certainly had us fooled."
08:24Apparently, they even got thrown in a police van at one point during the evening,
08:28until someone recognized Diana.
08:31It turns out Princess Diana didn't mind throwing convention out the window. According to Marie
08:36Claire, Diana was a true royal trailblazer when it came to the birth of her sons. The royals of
08:41the past had given birth by having the baby pulled out with forceps while the mother was
08:46under anesthetic. Diana, however, was apparently not so keen on this tradition. In fact, she not
08:52only gave birth fully awake, she also gave birth standing up. As childbirth expert Sheila Kitzinger
08:58explained,
08:59"...it was the first active royal birth, a complete contrast to the queen's."
09:03Apparently, Prince Charles was even present at the birth and helped to support his wife.
09:07Diana also chose to give birth at St. Mary's Hospital rather than at home. This started
09:12a brand new royal tradition, with Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton following in her footsteps.
09:18In The Crown, Princess Diana was shown surprising Prince Charles with a dance to Billy Joel's
09:23Uptown Girl with dancer Wayne Sleep. It turns out, this unusual performance really did happen.
09:29Apparently, the performance was supposed to be a present, but Charles wasn't too keen on
09:33the performance. As Sleep recalled, the entire audience was astonished to see her up on stage.
09:38He recalled that at the time, she refused to bow to the royal box before the dance,
09:43saying,
09:43"...I'm not bowing to him. He's my hubby."
09:45Even though Diana's infamous performance wasn't a hit with her husband, it's gone down in legend.
09:51And, by all accounts, the dance was pretty spectacular, despite even Sleep's doubts.
09:56"...Princess Diana wants to talk to you on the phone. So I said,
09:59hello. She said, well, I'm Waisley, I want to dance with you. And I thought, my God,
10:04she's too tall."
10:05As Sleep recalled to The Guardian,
10:07"...the routine had a bit of everything, jazz, ballet, even a kick line. At one point,
10:11I pirouetted and she pushed me down. Then I carried her across the stage."
10:16Long into her adulthood, Diana is said to have kept stuffed animals in her bedroom.
10:20According to the ABC documentary The Story of Diana, her stuffed animals had been with
10:25her for a long time. When Diana was just six, her mother left the family,
10:29and her father became inattentive. As Vogue put it,
10:32"...her family was her 20 stuffed animals."
10:35It seemed that everyone who came across Diana's slightly bizarre collection of toys couldn't help
10:39but notice it. James Hewitt, who had an affair with Diana during her marriage, once said,
10:44"...she had 30 childhood cuddly toys lining the end of her bed."
10:48Even though Princess Diana was largely a target of gossip and tabloid speculation,
10:52during her time as part of the royal family, she made some significant contributions to the
10:57charities and organizations she supported. One of her main causes was supporting the
11:02Mines Advisory Group in their bid to create a global ban on landmines. Throughout 1997,
11:08Diana was closely involved with the organization. She even acted as a keynote speaker at one of
11:13their events. Lou McGrath, one of the group's founders, told the BBC,
11:17"...it was tremendously important to have her on board. It was a turning point."
11:21Just a few months after Diana's tragic death, the group's campaign was shown to be successful,
11:26as 122 governments pledged to stop using landmines. The group even won a Nobel Prize
11:32that year. As McGrath explained, Diana's help had been controversial, but without it,
11:37the group wouldn't have been nearly as effective. Aside from everything else,
11:41this Nobel Prize-winning campaign is quite the legacy for the princess.
11:51you