Trivia

Nancy Astor once said to him, "If I was your wife I'd poison your coffee!" He replied, "If I was your husband I'd drink it".

Credited with this exchange with Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you are drunk, and what's more, you are disgustingly drunk"; "Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what's more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober, and you will still be disgustingly ugly".

Early in his life, he briefly worked as a greeting card designer for Hallmark.

Almost missed proposing to Clementine Ogilvy. He had promised to take her for a walk around the Blenheim Palace grounds, then overslept. His cousin Charles took Clementine for a carriage ride to prevent her from leaving, and sent a servant to roust Churchill out of bed.

All members of the Churchill family had animal nicknames. Wife Clementine was "Cat", son Randolph was "Rabbit", daughter Mary was "Mouse".

Early in his writing career, he was often mistaken for American novelist Winston Churchill. Churchill wrote to his counterpart, and told him he was thereafter going to sign all his published works 'Winston Spencer Churchill' to avoid confusion. The two actually met in Boston in 1899, and became fast friends.

US President Lyndon B. Johnson did not attend his funeral, officially due to a heavy cold. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower did attend.

He is buried in a modest churchyard in Bladon, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. Chartwell, his country house, is open to the public. Much of his painting was done there.

Was a member of The Tuna Club, the oldest fishing club in the US. Its members included Theodore Roosevelt, George S. Patton, Charles Chaplin, and Bing Crosby.

Born in a bedroom during a party at Blenheim Palace seven months after his parents' wedding. Answering speculation that he was conceived before her marriage, Lady Randolph later said, "Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it".

First gained fame in England as a war correspondent during the Second Boer War in 1899-1900. While covering the conflict (as what amounted to an "embedded" journalist, long before the term was coined) he was captured by Boer guerrillas and taken as a prisoner of war. Along with a few other prisoners, he hatched a bold scheme to escape. The success of this plan catapulted him to fame and helped him along in his political career.

Died 70 years to the day after his father, Lord Randolph Churchill.

While a young student at Harrow, he and some friends blew up a wooden shed using homemade gunpowder.

On 5/10/1940, the day he became Prime Minister, he ordered the RAF to begin bombing German cities. The first raid took place that night at Dortmund, with another taking place on the following evening at Monchengladbach.

The first American combat ship named after a foreigner, the guided-missile cruiser USS Winston S. Churchill, was launched on 4/17/1999.

Was largely responsible for the failure of the Norwegian Campaign in April-May 1940, which brought down Neville Chamberlain. Ironically he replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister on 10 May.

Created a Knight of the Most Noble Order of Garter on 4/24/53. The award was not made in any of the usual Honours Lists. Both he and his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had declined this honor in 1945, feeling it inappropriate following the landslide General Election defeat.

He hated the portrait by Graham Sutherland so much that he had it destroyed.

Awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in literature, he was allegedly disappointed that it wasn't the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent the Cold War between the East and West from deteriorating into nuclear conflict.

By a decree of 6/18/1958 (the anniversary of the famous BBC-broadcasted speech to France in 1940), he was named "Compagnon de la Libération", the prestigious Order initiated by Charles de Gaulle during World War II.

As a representative for the UK government, he helped draft the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State and ended the Anglo-Irish War. He heavily armed the Irish National Army against the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War.

The destruction of Dresden in February 1945 led to calls for him to be tried for war crimes.

He was already 65 years of age when he became Prime Minister in 1940. He suffered a mild heart attack in Washington in December 1941, a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was very ill with bronchitis around Christmas 1943. In 1949, as Leader of the Opposition, he suffered his first stroke while vacating in France. In June 1953, three weeks after the Coronation, he had a severe stroke that would have ended his second premiership had not Anthony Eden been hospitalized in the United States following three unsuccessful gall bladder operations. Following another stroke in April 1955, his health remained reasonably good until a fall from his bed at the Hotel Paris in 1962. Thereafter there was no subsequent recovery, although he remained a Member of Parliament until the 1964 General Election, finally standing down a month before his 90th birthday.

He has been blamed for the death of World War II code-breaker Alan Turing in 1954.

The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, "Fat Man", was christened by US Gen. Leslie Groves with Churchill in mind. The Hiroshima bomb, "Little Boy", was originally called "Thin Man", in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Proposed marriage to Ethel Barrymore. She refused him, but they remained friends.

Several respected historians have blamed him for the starvation of three million people in one year in the Bengal Famine of 1943. The devastation of the famine has been likened to genocide. Among those historians is David Olusoga, who claimed in 2018 that Churchill was "largely responsible" for the famine.

In a secret memorandum on 3/28/1945 he admitted Dresden was bombed only in order to terrorize the city's civilian population. The city itself had no military significance.

Three of the most notable and acclaimed screen portrayals of him were by Robert Hardy in Winston Churchill (1981) (which covers his life from 1929-39), Albert Finney in La tempête qui se prépare (2002) (also set in the 1930s before he became Prime Minister) and Gary Oldman in Les Heures sombres (2017) (which is set in May 1940).

Secret documents declassified in 2011 by MI5 revealed how he overthrew the elected government of British Guiana (now Guyana) in a surprise military coup on 10/9/1953 because he feared its left-wing Prime Minister Gagan Chedda would lead the British colony into an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Publicly defended the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration's coup d'état in Guatemala in June 1954, but was annoyed by the disinclination of the Americans to pressure Egypt into signing the Suez Canal Base Agreement.

He opposed suggestions to decriminalize homosexuality during his second premiership.

He smoked an estimated quarter-million cigars during his lifetime, and from 1908-65 drank two bottles of vintage champagne a day.

At the end of World War II he tried to publicly disassociate himself from the blitzing of German cities, due to the immense controversy following the destruction of Dresden. He had begun bombing German cities on 5/11/1940, four months before Adolf Hitler retaliated by ordering the London Blitz response.

In 2004 he came in first place in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. This followed a telephone vote campaign by the Churchill Society.

In 1963, by Act of Congress, he was granted honorary US citizenship, the first recipient since Lafayette. He was too infirm to travel to Washington, DC, to receive the honor in person, which was collected by his son and grandson.

Married at St. Margaret's, Westminster. Clementine was a decade younger than him.

He declined to be created the Duke of London after his final resignation as Prime Minister in 1955, ostensibly to allow his son to contest a seat in the House of Commons. In reality it was because Churchill himself wanted to remain in the House of Commons.

Pictured on a 5¢ US commemorative postage stamp issued in his honor, 5/13/1965.

Pictured on a 5¢ Canadian commemorative postage stamp issued in his honor 8/12/1965.

"Time" Magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1940 and 1949.

Father of Diana Churchill; Randolph Churchill; Sarah Churchill; Marigold Frances (15 November 1918 - 23 August 1921) and Lady Mary Soames.

Greta Garbo attended his funeral, as an extremely rare 1965 photograph proves.

May have had Alzheimer's disease in later life. Although the Churchill Museum maintains his reduced mental capacity was the result of multiple minor strokes since 1949, his symptoms were consistent with the illness.

Was a vocal supporter of destroying Germany as an economic and industrial power before and during World War II.

He repeatedly rejected offers from Adolf Hitler to end World War II, most notably on 5/26/1940 during the evacuation from Dunkirk, on 6/19/1940 after the Fall of France, and in May 1941 before the start of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.

His first action as Prime Minister was to overrun neutral Iceland on 5/10/1940, to prevent the country from being used as a launching base for an invasion of the UK.

During World War I his decision to use passenger ships like RMS Lusitania to transport munitions for the war effort proved highly controversial. It was speculated that he wanted American passengers to be killed in order to bring the US into the war.

Despite his later reputation as an opponent of appeasement, he did not begin to regularly speak out against Nazi Germany until May 1938.

Was criticized for making almost no reference in his radio broadcasts about Jews being killed by Axis forces in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.