Winston Churchill Events

1874 Nov 30 Winston Churchill Is Born
A descendant of the famous aristocratic Spencer family, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, like his father, used the surname Churchill in public life. His ancestor George Spencer had chan...
1893 Sep Winston Churchill Attends Royal Military College at Sandhurst
Never a strong scholar, the boy Winston rebelled against learning and refused to study what did not interest him. He was, Peter de Mendelsson (The Age of Churchill) reveals, at the bottom...
1895 Winston Churchill Travels To Cuba
"I hope the United States will not force Spain to give up Cuba— unless you are prepared to accept responsibility for the results of such action. If the States care to take Cuba—though this..." —Winston Churchill
1896 Oct Winston Churchill Is Transferred To Bombay
In early October 1896, he was transferred to Bombay, British India. He was considered one of the best polo players in his regiment and led his team to many prestigious tournament victorie...
1898 Winston Churchill Is Transferred To Egypt
The 21st Lancers were then ordered to cut the Dervish line of retreat into the city. As the Regiment advanced, they came under rifle fire from what appeared to be a few hundred skirmisher...
1899 Churchill Acts As War Correspondent During the Second Boer War
In 1899, Winston Churchill headed to South Africa as a newspaper correspondent for the Morning Post to cover the Boer War between British and Dutch settlers. Unfortunately, he was present...
1899 Winston Churchill Publishes 'The River War'
"..there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the..." —Winston Churchill
1900 Oct 1 Winston Churchill Is Elected To The House Of Commons
Churchill from the beginning invariably addressed national rather than local issues. Oldham (for which he sat in 1900-06) was an important cotton-spinning centre whose electorate favoured...
1900 Dec Winston Churchill Publishes 'The Story of the Malakand Field Force'
"Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inhere..." —Winston Churchill
1908 Apr 12 Winston Churchill Is Promoted To President Of The Board Of Trade
He [Churchill] was also, like Lloyd George before him, very willing to adopt a high profile in trying to resolve industrial disputes. Soon after taking office he set out to strengthen the...
1908 Sep 12 Winston Churchill Marries Clementine Hozier
Various contemporary memoirs contain references to Clementine's outstanding beauty, to which photographs (either then or later) rarely did justice. Lady Cynthia Asquith was to write of he...
1911 Jan 3 The Siege of Sidney Street
The police were armed with bulldog revolvers, shotguns and rifles fitted with .22 Morris-tube barrels for use on a minature range, but these proved completely inadequate for flushing out ...
1914 Oct 5 Winston Churchill Travels To 'The Siege of Antwerp'
On 2 October the Germans succeeded in penetrating two of the city's forts. Churchill was sent to Antwerp to provide a first-hand report on the situation there. Leaving London that night...
1915 Feb 22 Winston Churchill Establishes The Landships Committee
It was Churchill who, on Colonel Swinton's urging (and backed by Hankey), sponsored the establishment of the Landships Committee to investigate the potential of constructing what amounted...
1915 Apr 25
to 1916 Jan 9
 Battle of Gallipoli
Allied Forces, 128,000 General Hamilton, Commander British, 63,000 Russian, 47,000 French, 18,000 Cavalry, 36,000 Turkish Line Troops, 250,000 General Liman von Sanders, Command...
1919 Aug Winston Churchill Establishes The 'Ten-Year Rule'
With peace seemingly assured, in 1919 it was decided that for planning purposes the armed forces should abide by the ten-year rule and not plan on fighting a major war for ten years. Cuts...
1921 Dec 6 Winston Churchill Signs The Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty would replace the Third Home Rule Bill and the Ireland Act and would result in a much more independent South Ireland, or Irish Free State as the new country was cal...
1924 Nov 6 Winston Churchill Is Appointed Chancellor Of the Exchequer
Winston Churchill is justly admired for his lonely advocacy of rearmament in the 1930s, but as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s he was an equally staunch and eloquent critic of ar...
1925 Apr 28 Winston Churchill Returns Britain To The Gold Standard
Despite his readmission to office in 1917, after a spell commanding an infantry battalion on the Western Front, he failed to re-establish the reputation as a future national statesman he ...
1933 Oct Winston Churchill Publishes 'Marlborough: His Life and Times
Marlborough: His Life and Times was a panegyric biography written by Winston Churchill about John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Churchill was a descendant of the duke. The book com...
1939 Sep 3 Winston Churchill is Re-Appointed First Lord Of The Admiralty
After the Tories were defeated in 1929, Churchill fell out with Baldwin over the question of giving India further self-government. Churchill became more and more isolated in politics and ...
1940 May 10 Winston Churchill Is Appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
From as early as 1936 Winston Churchill was making noises in Parliament about the overwhelming rate of German rearmament. His campaign made him unpopular with an administration which favo...
1940 May 13 Winston Churchill Gives 'Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat' Speech
"I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with whi..." —Winston Churchill
1940 Jun 4 Winston Churchill Gives 'We Shall Fight on the Beaches' Speech
We Shall Fight On The Beaches is a common title given to a speech delivered by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the British Parliament on the 4 June 1940. The speech was g...
1940 Jun 18 Winston Churchill Gives 'This Was Their Finest Hour' Speech
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest..." —Winston Churchill
1941 Dec 26 Winston Churchill Addresses A Joint Meeting Of The United States Congress
The date was December 26, 1941. Outside the U.S. Capitol Building, platoons of soldiers and police stood at high alert. Shortly after noon, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill entere...
1942 Aug 13 Joseph Stalin Drafts A Memorandum To Winston Churchill And Franklin Roosevelt
On August 13, 1942, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin drafted a memorandum to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt opposing their decision not to inva...
1942 Nov 10 Winston Churchill Delivers His 'This Is Not The End' Speech
"The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it ..." —Winston Churchill
1943 Aug 17 First Quebec Conference is Held
The conference also established a new theatre of war in South East Asia, with Lord Mountbatten as commander, and reached an agreement to dissuade Spain from supplying tungsten to Germany ...
1943 Nov 22 Cairo Conference is Held
In November and December of 1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ...
1943 Nov 28
to 1943 Dec 1
 Tehran Conference
The first of only two wartime meetings between the three leaders, the Tehran Conference opened with Stalin brimming with confidence after several major victories on the Eastern Front. Ope...
1944 Sep 12 Second Quebec Conference Is Held
Churchill, Roosevelt and their advisers met for a second time in Quebec in a conference codenamed Octagon. (The first Quebec conference had been held more than a year earlier, in August 1...
1945 Feb 4
to 1945 Feb 11
 Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of gov...
1945 Feb 13 The British Royal Air Force Bombs The City Of Dresden
"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed... I fe..." —Winston Churchill
1945 May 8 Victory in Europe Day
Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day or VE Day) was on 8 May 1945, the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and th...
1945 Jul 16
to 1945 Aug 12
 The Potsdam Conference is Held at Cecilienhof
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from July 16 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the Sovi...
1951 Oct 25 Winston Churchill Is Elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a Second Term
After the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His third government—after the wartime national government and the brief caretaker government of 1945—lasted unt...
1952 The Mau Mau Uprising Begins
By 1950, mounting frustration over land distribution and political inequality in Kenya had led to the formation of the Mau Mau movement of civil disobedience and violent resistance to Bri...
1953 Oct 15 Winston Churchill Is Awarded The Nobel Prize In Literature
In 1953, Churchill not only received the Nobel Prize, but also, at the time of the Queen’s coronation, was awarded knighthood in the Order of the Garter. Competition for the Nobel ...
1965 Jan 24 Winston Churchill Dies
The final decade of Churchill's life has been described as a "long sunset." He continued to be feted and honored, and he enjoyed a final visit to the White House in 1959. During this peri...