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The Queen’s room was broken into by an intruder

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Updated on March 26, 2021

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Buckingham Palace is perhaps one of the most protected buildings in the world. In 1982, however, Queen Elizabeth II suffered a rude awakening when a man broke into her bedroom late at night. Michael Fagan, 32, “scaled the barbed-wire-topped, 14ft wall of Buckingham Palace and shinned up a drainpipe,” according to the Independent, and then made his way to the monarch’s boudoir. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Fagan jokingly recounted what must have been a weird and frightening night for the queen.

“She was sleeping in there on her own,” Fagan told the outlet about the night in question. “Her nightie was one of those Liberty prints and it was down to her ankles,” he allegedly said, smiling. “She went past me and ran out of the room; her little bare feet running across the floor,” the intruder claims the queen asked what he was doing there before immediately fleeing: “She went past me and ran out of the room; her little bare feet running across the floor.” But that’s not all: while walking around the palace, Fagan allegedly triggered two separate alarms before being in the queen’s bedroom. The royal security staff, on the other hand, seemed to assume that the warnings were simply device flaws.

Fortunately, Fagan proved to have no malice against Queen Elizabeth. “I don’t know why I did it, something really got into my head,” he told the Independent in 2020.