Queen's birthday facts revealed

The Queen has received more than 3m items of correspondence

To celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday, Buckingham Palace has released 80 facts about her life.

The monarch has launched 23 ships, sat for 139 official portraits, opened 15 bridges, and owned more than 30 corgis.

And according to an ancient statute, all the sturgeons, whales, porpoises and dolphins in the waters around the UK, technically belong to her.

The Queen's 80th birthday falls on 21 April and she will celebrate her official birthday on 17 June.

Gifts given to the Queen include jaguars, black beavers, sloths, a box of snail shells, pineapples, eggs, a grove of maple trees and 15lb (7kg) of prawns.

She is also the first member of the Royal Family to be awarded a gold disc.

Christmas puddings

More than 100,000 copies of EMI's CD Party At The Palace - recorded at the first public concert in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, for the Queen's Golden Jubilee - were sold within the first week of release.

She has also received more than three million items of correspondence.

HAVE YOUR SAY I share the Queen's birthday and celebrate my 40th this 21 April Addy Nicholls, London Send us your comments

The Queen has sent about 100,000 telegrams to centenarians in the UK and the Commonwealth and more than 280,000 to couples celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary.

The Queen sent her first e-mail from an Army base in 1976 and she travelled on the London Underground for the first time in 1939.

And she has given out more than 78,000 Christmas puddings to staff.

Astronauts landed

The Queen also has a message on the Moon.

When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed there on 21 July 1969, her message of congratulations was microfilmed and deposited in a metal container.

At Buckingham Palace, the Queen has met the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to go into space, Major Yuri Gagarin, and the first woman in space, Valentina Tereschkova.

Since 1952, she has conferred more than 387,700 honours and awards and held more than 540 investitures.

There have been six Archbishops of Canterbury, 10 prime ministers and 10 US presidents during her reign.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said the Queen had "always been a vanguard of change, but she also maintains traditions".