Britain's Queen Elizabeth II Husband Prince Philip Dies at 99

BRITAIN: Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband has died at age 99 on April 9.

After retiring from his public role in 2017, Prince Philip spent 65 years supporting the queen and largely out of the view since.

In his active years, he helped set a new course for the monarchy under a young queen, championing Britain itself, as well as environmental causes, science and technology.

It is to be mentioned that the queen in a speech on their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997 called Philip her "strength and stay".

"I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know," she said at the time.

Born on June 10, 1921, on the Greek island of Corfu, he was the only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, and Princess Alice of Battenberg. Greece's king, Philip's uncle, was forced to abdicate when Philip was a baby, and the family fled to Paris, with Philip famously carried to safety in a crib made from an orange box.

At 18, Philip joined the Royal Navy and graduated from the Britannia Royal Naval College as a top cadet. He saw active duty from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, and in 1945 at the end of World War II, he was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.

Then known as Philip Mountbatten, he first met his cousin Elizabeth in 1934 at a family wedding. The two are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.