Queen Elizabeth’s First Royal Tweet

Today, Queen Elizabeth II set the Twitter world afire when she became the first British monarch to send a tweet out to the masses.The queen sent the historic tweet this morning when she visited London’s science museum, and within the first hour, it had already been retweeted over 6,500 times. The @BritishMonarchy account is rapidly approaching the one-million subscriber mark.

It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.

— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014

Queen Elizabeth joins the ranks of other world leaders who have used Twitter to reach out to the public, including former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Although there was no indication that Queen Elizabeth would continue to send tweets in the future, she wouldn’t be the first British monarch to use a new technology to address her subjects. Her father, King George VI, famously used radio broadcasts to send words of encouragement to the people of the United Kingdom during World War II.

#TheQueenTweets pic.twitter.com/jz69LOlGcD

— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014

The tweet has already had its fair share of trolls jumping in on the excitement, with some people using the occasion to voice their opinions on the monarchy and British politics in general. They probably don’t need to be worry about being sent to the Tower for criticizing the queen, but they could still end up in prison if their tweets become threatening.