About a month earlier than Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited the Bay Area and Yosemite National Park in 1983 — eating with President Ronald Reagan and Joe Montana and having fun with a serenade from Tony Bennett — a San Francisco police officer acquired an ominous name from a person he met at a favourite Irish pub.
As the officer advised the FBI, the person advised him he needed to avenge his daughter who “had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet,” in response to newly launched FBI paperwork.
In the decision, dated Feb. 4, 1983, the person described how he would hurt the British monarch throughout her California go to, the BBC and New York Times mentioned, citing the FBI paperwork. The man mentioned he would do that “either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath, or (he) would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park,” the BBC reported.
Responding to the risk, the Secret Service made plans to shut the walkway on the bridge because the yacht approached the bridge, the BBC mentioned. The paperwork don’t say what measures had been taken at Yosemite, nor do they are saying if anybody was arrested for the risk, the New York Times mentioned.
Elizabeth II, who died in September, paid California a multi-day go to in 1983, which began in San Diego and included a tour of a Los Angeles movie studio and a cease at Reagan’s ranch in Santa Barbara, the New York Times reported. The California journey got here throughout a time of heightened tensions amid the 30-year sectarian battle in Northern Ireland referred to as the Troubles.
Some 3,600 individuals had been killed throughout the Troubles, throughout which the British authorities deployed its navy to Protestant enclaves, which needed the province to stay a part of the U.Ok. The navy usually confronted teams, together with the Irish Republican Army, that needed to reunite Northern Ireland with the remainder of Ireland.
The risk to kill the queen in San Francisco got here 4 years after her second cousin, Lord Mountbatten, was killed in an IRA bombing off the coast of County Sligo in Ireland. The pub the place the San Francisco police officer encountered the queen’s would-be murderer was known as the Dovre Club, which the FBI described as a gathering place for sympathizers of the IRA, the New York Times mentioned.
After authorities quietly dealt with the assassination risk, the queen’s go to to California proceeded in celebratory vogue, leaving her to recollect it as a “wonderful and enjoyable journey,” the New York Times reported. However, there have been issues.
The plan for Elizabeth and Philip to sail into San Francisco Bay on Her Majesty’s Yacht the Britannia, as they’d performed in San Diego, needed to be scrapped attributable to a storm and tough seas, so that they arrived by airplane a day early on March 3.
Th royal couple had been welcomed with a live performance at Davies Symphony Hall, CBS Bay Area reported. That’s the place the tensions over Northern Ireland introduced some points. Pro-Irish demonstrators gathered outdoors the corridor to protest. Inside, the occasions had been briefly disrupted by an Irish American protester who shouted “stop the torture” earlier than he was hustled out.
Seated with then-Mayor Diane Feinstein, the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh loved a efficiency by the forged of “Beach Blanket Babylon” and listened to Tony Bennett sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” The duke might be seen singing alongside to Bennett’s basic ode.
Elizabeth donned her jewels and tiara for a glittery dinner on the M.H. de Young Museum, hosted by President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan, CBS Bay Area mentioned. The visitor record included the Bay Area’s personal royalty: Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Montana and Steve Jobs.
During the go to, the queen and Prince Philip additionally drove down the Peninsula to Palo Alto to go to the headquarters of Hewlett-Packard and to take pleasure in lunch with the president of Stanford University.
The royal couple capped off their go to to Northern California with a weekend in Yosemite National Park, staying on the Ahwahnee Hotel, the New York Times reported. They later returned to San Francisco, the place she gave a dinner aboard the Britannia to have fun the Reagans’ thirty first wedding ceremony anniversary.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
