Churchill’s Washington Humor, Part 2

May 1, 2012

Con­tin­ued from Part 1… Win­ston Churchill was the only for­eigner to have made three speeches to joint ses­sions of Con­gress. His last was in 1952—whose text I was asked for by Nel­son Mandela’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives when Man­dela, a Churchill admirer, him­self addressed a joint ses­sion. In his 1952 speech Churchill famously told Con­gress: I am hon­oured indeed by these [...]

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No cards, no flowers: Churchill on Stalin’s Death

April 30, 2012

A cor­re­spon­dent to the Finan­cial Times has slipped a red her­ring into the store of Win­ston Churchill quo­ta­tions. In a let­ter to the FT on April 14th, Mary Ellen Synon was defend­ing Irish  Taoiseach Eamon de Valera’s 1945 let­ter to the Ger­man Embassy in Dublin express­ing con­do­lences on the sui­cide death of Adolf Hitler. Ms. Synon sug­gested that this [...]

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Churchill’s Washington Humor, Part 1

April 30, 2012

A friend who is deliv­er­ing a Churchill speech in D.C. asked for some exam­ples of Churchil­ian humor involv­ing Wash­ing­ton and U.S. Pres­i­dents. Every­one enjoys Churchill’s famous crack in his first (1941) speech to Con­gress: “If my father had been Amer­i­can, and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my [...]

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Did Churchill Praise Hitler?

April 29, 2012

I came upon a par­lia­men­tary report where Churchill was reported as say­ing that should Britain find her­self in the sit­u­a­tion Ger­many was in he hoped we too could find some­one of Herr Hitler’s cal­i­bre (or words to that effect).  I was after some­thing else and did not record the date,  etc. —P.P., UK Yes, on 6 December [...]

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Baseball: Oldest Living Player

April 27, 2012

¡Ex lig­a­may­orista Mar­rero cumple 101 años! “He threw every­thing toward the plate but the ball.” —Ted Williams Con­grat­u­la­tions to Con­rado Euge­nio Mar­rero, the old­est liv­ing major league base­ball player, who cel­e­brated his 101st birth­day in Havana on April 25th with one of his patented cig­ars. Con­nie Mar­rero pitched 735 innings for the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors in 1950-54, [...]

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