Lieutenant Dominic Ward, from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and Cherie Preston, were celebrating their wedding in the palace grounds, when security officers and police were called to deal with a drunken man, running amok with a fire extinguisher. He was later arrested, but all the guests were asked to leave the premises.
"The wedding staff were screaming and shouting at all the wedding guests to get out. All the guests were kicked out and the best man managed to find a new venue in a nearby hotel complex, which cost a fortune to hire," a source told the Times newspaper.
Queen Nearly Shot
In January 2017, it was revealed that the Queen — who is known to occasionally struggle to sleep at night — was nearly shot when she donned a coat and went for a night-time stroll in the back gardens of Buckingham Palace.
"Bloody hell, Your Majesty, I nearly shot you," the guard was reported to have said, in surprise.
"That's quite all right. Next time I'll ring through beforehand so you don't have to shoot me," the Queen retorted.
Queen's Bedside, Cheddar Cheese
Meanwhile, back in 1982, an unemployed decorator called Michael Fagan, whose wife had left him, scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace — which is topped with rolling spikes and barbed wire — and got into the main building where he subsequently entered the Queen's bedroom.
The story goes, the Queen phoned the palace switchboard twice to call for the police, but to no avail, while Fagan asked her for a cigarette, which was brought by a maid. The situation was finally resolved when a footman — who had been out walking the Queen's dogs — arrived with the police.
Worse still, Fagan claims to have entered the palace grounds a month before, when he got into the palace via an open window and spent half an hour eating cheddar cheese and biscuits while wandering round looking at the royal paintings.
#OTDLDN 1982 Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace and spent 10 minutes talking to the Queen in her bedroom. pic.twitter.com/dJWHbzSdfG
— London Town Tours (@TownTours) July 9, 2016
Time Flies
Another royal palace — Westminster — is dominated by the famous clock tower that houses Big Ben, the bell that strikes the hour.
However, its accuracy was brought into question in 1945 when a flock of starlings landed on one of the hands of the clock face with such weight it pushed the time back by five minutes.
