Three months before the then-Princess Elizabeth ascended to the throne as queen, she and husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, made their first visit to the United States in October 1951.
With the White House undergoing major renovations, the royal couple was hosted by President Harry S. Truman and his family at the president’s official guest residence Blair House.
“I know it is never possible to understand a country as great as this by visiting only its capital,” Elizabeth, then 25, told Truman as he greeted the couple at the airport, per the Harry S. Truman Library, “even such a splendid one as Washington.”
“But so much of the history of the United States has been enacted here,” she continued, “so many memorials of your national achievement stand here, that I hope before I leave to see a little deeper into the sources of your great strength.”
Elizabeth had visited the U.S. eight times during her 70-year reign, with her last venture being in May 2007 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in the U.S., Jamestown, Va. She and Philip stayed at the White House with President George W. Bush and First Lady Lara Bush.
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