The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II is the planned international celebration in 2012 marking the 60th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II to the thrones of seven countries, upon the death of her father, King George VI, on 6 February 1952. Queen Victoria in 1897 is thus far the only other monarch in the histories of Britain, Canada, and a few other Commonwealth realms to have celebrated a Diamond Jubilee. In the United Kingdom, national and regional events have been planned to mark the Diamond Jubilee. An extra bank holiday would take place on Tuesday, 5 June 2012 meaning this will result in a four-day holiday in honour of the Diamond Jubilee, coinciding with the Queen’s Official Birthday in the United Kingdom, also on 4 June. A large event will be staged in London on that weekend, which is to include a diamond jubilee concert, reportedly to be produced by singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, and a maritime parade of boats and events along the River Thames on 3 June, in which 1,000 boats are expected to take part (the largest flotilla to be seen on the river in 350 years) and some one million people are expected to watch from the banks. The Queen and other members of the Royal family will be carried down the Thames on a special Royal barge. Street parties can be permitted to take place across the country. There was a contest held by the BBC children’s programme Blue Peter to design the official emblem for the Diamond Jubilee; the winning design, announced in February 2011, was created by ten-year-old Katherine Dewar.
The future Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park. To mark the jubilee, the Queen will bestow Royal Borough status on Greenwich, in south-east London. In addition, a competition will grant in 2012 city status to one town and either a lord mayoralty or lord provostship to one city. The Olympic park in East London, created for the 2012 London Olympics, will be named the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park following the Olympics. In March 2011, the Royal Commonwealth Society launched the Jubilee Time Capsule to mark the jubilee. In the United Kingdom, 60 Jubilee woodlands are planned to be established by the Woodland Trust in 2011-12, one of which is to be 500 acres and the remainder 60 acres each.
