That Time in 1994 When A Cricket Ball Almost Hit Queen Elizabeth II in the Head

In case you live under a rock (no offense to those who do), Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch, died on Thursday, September 8th. She had a remarkable run: she survived several meetings with Boris Johnson, she survived both Claire Foy and Olivia Colman's portraits of her on Netflix's The Crown, and although she couldn't outlive Liza Minelli, she did manage to weather countless storms. 

Rather than give you another list of funny memes relating to the Queen's death and rather than go through the highlights of her career like an actual news website, we thought that the best way to tribute Her Majesty here on FAIL Blog would be to recount a little-told story of a cricket match gone wrong in 1994.

The story was first reported in 2019 following the Buckingham Palace Garden Party, where 19-year-old philanthropist Lucy Stafford was invited to attend. Stafford was introduced to Her Majesty, who shared the anecdote herself. Stafford then posted about the encounter on Instagram and further explained to HELLO magazine that “the Queen was very funny, she reminisced about how her bodyguard had caught a cricket ball flying towards her at a match in 1994. She said she would have been dead if it hadn't been caught!”

That's right: death by a cricket ball. If that actually happened, think about all the stuff the Queen would have missed. No, we're not talking politics here. I mean, she would have missed late 90s fashion, Will Smith's Oscar slap, Boris Johnson's haircut, the release of Beyoncé's Lemonade, Taylor and Kanye's feud, and, most recently, the Don't Worry Darling press tour (the latter of which might actually be the thing that got her, though…the timing is just too perfect). Of course, we the public are very glad the Queen lived to tell the tale and was able to give us 27 more years of a world before we would have to deal with Charles as King. Still, of all the life-threatening events that Queen Elizabeth survived (and according to Latin Times, there have been many), the cricket ball encounter has got to be the most unique and the most British. 

For more content about Queen Elizabeth II, take a look at the best tweets following the announcement of her passing, and from all of us here at FAIL Blog, God Save the Queen! Her legacy will live on forever because she did, in fact, almost live forever.