9th April: Winston Churchill Day

Winston Churchill Day - on 9 April 1963, US President John F. Kennedy – acting under authorisation granted by an Act of Congress – proclaimed Sir Winston Churchill an Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill and Mother Teresa are the only people to have been made honorary US citizens during their lifetimes. Here are ten more fascinating facts about Winston Churchill:

1. He was in fact half American. His mother was Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a wealthy financier. She was born in Brooklyn. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough. He also had a brother, Jack, and is also related to Diana, Princess of Wales.
2. Anyone encountering Churchill when he was at school probably wouldn't have foreseen the statesman he was destined to become. He had red hair and a lisp (all his life he had trouble pronouncing the letter S, and many of his famous witticisms where planned well in advance for this reason). His schoolmates called him "Copperknob". He didn't exactly excel in lessons, either. He did okay in history and English composition, but was rubbish at everything else. In his memoirs he described taking a Latin test and leaving it completely blank except for his name, the number of the first question, and “a blot and several smudges.” He failed the entrance exams for Sandhurst twice.
3. Churchill proposed marriage to three different women in his twenties before meeting his wife, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier (He took her to church! Sorry. Couldn't resist).
4. Some of the things he said and did as a politician and some of his views would not go down well today, AT ALL. He was against votes for women, thought mentally deficient people should be sterilised and that Zulus, Afghans and Dervishes were “savages and barbarous peoples.” He famously didn't like Gandhi, and favoured letting him die when he went on hunger strike. When Churchill visited a siege in 1911 where two burglars were hiding in a house with 200 police officers outside, and the house caught fire, Churchill ordered the fire brigade not to put the Fire out and let the two men burn to death.
5. He was nevertheless very emotional, and would sometimes break down in tears during his speeches. He suffered from clinical depression throughout his life, calling it his "Black Dog".
6. He would find relief from the pressures of his work and his depression in his hobbies. He'd paint (produced almost 600 works of art during his lifetime), write (he wrote many books, mostly history, but also one novel, and won a Nobel Prize in literature) and bricklaying (he built several walls at his house at Chartwell). He even started learning to fly a plane, but had to give that up after he was hurt in an aeroplane crash at Croydon aerodrome – and his wife made him give it up.
7. He was notorious for his smoking and drinking - yet still lived to be 90. His mother tried to make him give up smoking when he was 15 by promising to buy him a gun and a pony if he quit. He quit for just long enough to cash in on the deal. He he has a cuban cigar named after him - the Churchill is approximately 7inches long and 19mm wide. It is said that Winston Churchill was the only person whom Field Marshal Montgomery would allow to smoke in his presence. As for drinking, his luggage when he set off for the Boer War, included 60 bottles of booze. Later, his daily drinking routine comprised a weak whiskey and soda at 9.30am, a pint of champagne and a cognac with his lunch, sherry and another pint of champers with his dinner followed by 90 year old brandy - after which he would go back to work for another four hours!
8. When staying at the White House in 1941, he'd wander around starkers in his room, and wouldn't cover up when the servants came up with his brandy. Nor would he when President Franklin D Rooselvelt himself paid him a call. Churchill is alleged to have said: ‘The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.’ Churchill also claimed to have seen the ghost of Abraham Lincoln in the White House. The ghost's reaction to a naked Winston Churchill is not recorded.
9. Elizabeth II offered to create Churchill Duke of London, but he declined.
10. Winston Churchill is the only prime minister to enter the music charts (eat your heart out, Tony Blair). He first charted in 1965, shortly after his death, with ‘The Voice Of‘ – a collection of his most famous speeches. He charted a second time with a record marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain: ‘Reach For The Skies‘, by The Central Band of the Royal Air Force.