Royal Evictions and Bird Drama: When Victoria Ghosted Her Mom and Ben Franklin Trash-Talked America's Mascot

On June 20th, 1782, the United States Congress adopted what might be the most passive-aggressive symbol in the history of national heraldry: the Great Seal featuring a bald eagle clutching an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other. What makes this particularly delicious is that Benjamin Franklin had lobbied hard for the turkey instead, arguing the eagle was a bird of bad moral character and a rank coward. Franklin lost that battle, though one suspects he spent the rest of his days smirking every time he saw the bird that regularly gets chased away from its meals by ordinary crows. But the real oddity of June 20th comes from 1837, when eighteen-year-old Princess Victoria ascended to the British throne under circumstances so peculiar they read like bad fiction. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain arrived at Kensington Palace at five o'clock in the morning and had to bang on the door repeatedly before anyone answered. They then had to wait while someone woke the young princess, who came down in her nightgown to be informed she was now Queen of the United Kingdom and ruler of the largest empire on Earth. Her first act as monarch was to ask for an hour alone, away from her domineering mother with whom she had shared a bedroom for her entire life. Within weeks she had her mother's furniture removed from the royal apartments and relegated her to distant quarters, proving that even constitutional monarchs can engage in the timeless human tradition of moving out of your parents' house the moment you get the chance.