Prince George wearing his pajamas and a dressing gown to meet then-President Barack Obama has gone viral on social media as the royal turns 11 years old.
The future king marked his birthday on Monday, when his mother, Princess Kate, released a new picture of him looking dapper in a suit and open-necked shirt.
However, another childhood picture resurfaced of the prince wearing a somewhat less formal outfit to meet Obama alongside George's father, Prince William.
George was a few months off his third birthday when the former president popped round to Kensington Palace in London for dinner on April 22, 2016.
A White House handout image captured the moment George wore light-blue gingham pajamas and a monogrammed dressing gown to shake Obama's hand.
The photo resurfaced on X, formerly Twitter, on the day Joe Biden announced he was ending his bid for reelection and a day before George turned 11 on July 22.
The picture has been liked more than 15,000 times and viewed almost 350,000 times after it was posted on Sunday with the message: "Prince George casually meeting Barack Obama in his pj's will forever be iconic."
George was allowed to stay up 15 minutes past his bedtime so he could meet Obama, ABC News reported back in 2016.
At the time, Biden was the vice president and Obama was nearing the end of his second term. Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Donald Trump were both pulling ahead in their respective primaries.
That November, Trump went on to win his first term in office; now he is fighting to get his second. And then, just as now, America knew it was preparing to say goodbye to a sitting president.
Obama visited Buckingham Palace in London multiple times and Queen Elizabeth II "completely fell in love" with him, according to royal author Tom Quinn's book Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle.
The queen reportedly enjoyed one of Obama's gifts, an iPod filled with British show tunes; and on one occasion, the former president recalled a surprise invite for his daughters to ride in one of the late monarch's carriages.
Quoted by Business Insider, Obama said: "So, I've got Malia, who at that point is 11, Sasha who is 8, and my mother-in-law, who was a stay-at-home mom and a secretary for a bank—who lived on the south side of Chicago her whole life, sitting there with the Queen of England.
"And then she insists that the girls take her golden carriage, which I guess she uses for jubilees, on a long drive through the Palace grounds.
"None of this was ever reported. It was just something that she did quietly," he added.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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