Diana Spencer Chronology
Nov. 5, 1981: The palace announces Diana is pregnant with her first child.
January 1982: Diana falls down a staircase at Sandringham at the end of hefirst trimester, which she later admitted was a deliberate cry for attention from Charles
June 21, 1982: The couple’s first child, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, is born at London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, where his own children would be born three decades later.
March 1983: Together with Charles, Diana and 9-month-old son William embark on their first royal tour together to Australia and New Zealand.
Sept. 15, 1984: The couple’s second son, Prince Henry Charles Albert David, aka Harry, is born.
Nov. 9, 1985: First lady Nancy Reagan orchestrates Diana’s memorable dance with John Travolta at the White House.
April 1987: At the peak of homophobia and fear of AIDS, Diana visits and shakes hands with man with the disease without gloves on.
1989: During a 40th birthday party for Camilla Parker Bowles’ sister, Diana dismisses her husband and confronts Camilla about her ongoing affair with Charles. “I would just like you to know that I know exactly what is going on,” Diana tells Camilla, warning her not to treat the princess “like an idiot.”
March 29, 1992: Diana’s father, John Spencer passes away.
Aug. 20, 1991: Diana cuts short her annual royal family summer holiday at Balmoral to return to London to be at the bedside of longtime friend Adrian Ward-Jackson, who dies of AIDS-related illness two days later
May 1992: Journalist Andrew Morton publishes Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words. Begun a year earlier, it consisted of no face-to-face interviews because she couldn’t risk being seen as openly participating. Morton sent written questions via her friend Dr. James Colthurst, who recorded the interviews and ferried the tapes back to him.
December 1992: Prime Minister John Major informs Parliament of the official separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
January 1993: The “Camillagate” tapes surfaced, audio recordings of phone conversations between Charles and his lover.
December 1993: Diana announces her plan to retire from public life, and dramatically pares down her list of charity patronages.
Fall 1995: Diana meets Dr. Hasnat Khan, the Pakistani-born cardiac surgeon overseeing her acupuncturist’s postoperative care and begins a secret, two-year relationship. He breaks up with her in the early summer of 1997
Nov. 20, 1995: BBC’s newsmagazine Panorama airs Martin Bashir’s bombshell interview with Diana at Kensington Palace, which had been planned and carried out in secrecy. Her most famous quote was “Well, there were three of us in the marriage so it was a bit crowded.”
August 1996: The terms of the royal divorce are finalised. Diana is awarded a lump-sum settlement of $22.5 million in cash, as well as about $600,000 a year earmarked to maintain her private office in addition to receiving permission to continue living in their Kensington Palace apartment. She agrees to give up any future claim of being queen. However, she is stripped of the title Her Royal Highness and is henceforth referred to as Diana, Princess of Wales, seen as a petty move on the part of the palace.
Jan. 15, 1997: Diana walks through minefield in Angola to support the Red Cross’ call for a ban on landmines and to showcase the de-mining work being done by one of the ch
Aug. 30, 1997: A few months after her split with Khan, Diana and her new beau, Dodi Fayed, depart Paris’ Ritz-Carlton Hotel after dinner to spend the night at his apartment.
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