GETTY As a child Churchill was mocked for his red hair and given the nickname "Copperknob"

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In celebration of this historical anniversary, Express.co.uk takes a chronological look back through his life in 50 facts. 1. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on Monday November 30th 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire to Tory politician, Lord Randolph Churchill and American-born beauty Jeanette Jerome. 2. Churchill's parents led a glamorous life in high society but were distant with their children and as a result, the future wartime leader was instead brought up by his nanny, Mrs Elizabeth Ann Everest. He and younger brother Jack were sent to boarding schools in Ascot and Brighton. 3. From an early age, Churchill was fiercely independent and rebellious – qualities which resulted in a poor academic record at school, for which he was punished. 4. Enrolled into Harrow School on Tuesday April 17th 1888, young Winston – who struggled with a stutter and a lateral lisp – was mocked for his red hair and was quickly given the cruel nickname "Copperknob". 5. After leaving Harrow in 1893 with average academic results, Churchill applied to attend the Royal Military College, in Sandhurst. But the future military commander struggled with the entrance exam – taking THREE attempts before eventually passing in 1893.

GETTY Churchill, pictured age 7, struggled with a stutter and a lateral lisp throughout his life

6. Churchill's military career was AGAIN delayed after his entry into Sandhurst had to be postponed because young Winston fell off a bridge near his aunt’s house into a tree during a particularly competitive game of 'chase' . He was laid up in bed for three months following the accident recovering from a ruptured kidney.

It is said that Winston Churchill was the only person whom Field Marshal Montgomery would allow to smoke in his presence

7. Between 1895 and 1900 Churchill sought to get himself transferred into as many dangerous military zones as possible – writing up his narrow escapes from the front line for papers including the Daily Graphic, and Daily Telegraph. By 1899, working as a correspondent for the Morning Post, Churchill negotiated a salary of £250 a month and all expenses paid – equal to more than £27,000 today – making him the highest-paid war correspondent of the day. 8. Winston Churchill took some 60 bottles of booze with him when he set out for the Boer War. 9. Churchill was made a prisoner of war during his time as a war reporter. He was captured after the armoured train he was travelling on in South Africa was stormed by Boer soldiers. The war correspondent threw himself to safety in a ditch by the side of the track after the train collided with a boulder on the track – placed over the rails for the ambush. Churchill was found hunkered down in the dirt by an armed Boer soldier. The future British PM reached for his pistol only to realise it was in the crippled train carriage. Defenceless, he then surrendered to the soldier who decided not to shoot. The Boer soldier turned out to be Louis Botha – the future first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa who would work with Churchill in later life to help South Africa become a British Dominion. 10. Churchill was marched to a prison camp in 1899, which he soon escaped by scaling a wall in the dead of night. Two fellow prisoners had planned to escape with the young servicemen but turned back. Churchill marched and stole rides on goods trains to travel some 300miles from the prison to Lourenço Marques, the capital of Mozambique. Churchill was forced to hide in a mine shaft for three days during his great escape.

GETTY Churchill earned the equivalent to some £1,073,195 during a speaking tour through north America

11. After returning as a young war hero and publishing his tales from the battlefields, Churchill contested the Oldham constituency seat – which he had lost a year earlier – and won. This was just months before his 26th birthday. 12. Successfully winning the seat for the Conservative party – Churchill then embarked on a speaking tour through Britain and north America which helped him raise £10,000 for himself (equivalent to some £1,073,195 today). 13. Jeremy Paxman once branded British war hero Winston Churchill "a ruthless egotist, a chancer and a charlatan". 14. For two years – between 1903 and 1905 – young Winston wrote an ambitious two-volume biography of his own father. The book received a huge amount of critical acclaim at the time. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States who knew Lord Randolph Churchill, branded the biography "a clever, tactful and rather cheap and vulgar life of that clever, tactful and rather cheap and vulgar egotist". 15. Churchill's political career lasted over 60 years – from winning his first seat with a meagre majority in 1900 to an elder Member of Parliament until June 1964. 16. Winston was a supporter of eugenics – the practice of improving the overall genetic quality of mankind – and while helping create the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, he drafted in that the feeble-minded should be sterilised instead of confined in institutions. This was changed before the Act was eventually passed into law. 17. As a young politician, Churchill was staunchly against votes for women. 18. Churchill's reputation in Wales and in Labour circles suffered a blow in 1910 when coal miners in Rhondda Valley kickstarted the Tonypandy Riot. The Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested troops be sent to help police quell the violent riots. But Churchill only allowed the reinforcements to travel as far as Swindon and Cardiff – before blocking their deployment. 19. In January 1911, then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill visited the police siege of two politically-motivated burglars on Sidney Street in East London. Two hundred police officers were in place at the cordoned off street by the time Churchill arrived, some six hours into the siege. The two burglers were holed up inside a house which caught fire later in the day. Churchill stopped the fire brigade from dousing the flames – so that the men inside were burned to death. "I thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in rescuing those ferocious rascals," he later explained. 20. Churchill was personally involved in the development of the tank – which was first used in battle by the British army on September 15 1916.

GETTY Winston Churchill, a Morning Post correspondent in the Boer War, on his horse

GETTY Churchill negotiated a salary of £250 a month as a war reporter – equivalent to £27,000 today

21. By October 1911, Churchill, aged 37, was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty – a post under which he would continue to serve into the First World War. In this role, he would use his influence to put a greater emphasis on using aeroplanes in military combat. He was fascinated by aerial combat and even started taking flying lessons himself. He never gained his pilot's licence after he was hurt in an aeroplane crash at Croydon aerodrome – and his wife urged him to give up the hobby. 22. Winston Churchill once defined tact as “the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” 23. One of the first times OMG was used was in a letter to Churchill – Admiral John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher penned the correspondence in 1917. Writing: "O.M.G (Oh! My! God!)-- Shower it on the Admiralty!" 24. Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan’s daughter all claimed to have witnessed Abraham Lincoln’s ghost walking the corridors of the White House. 25. Never one for mincing his words, Churchill said Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". 26. The disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during the First World War was the brainchild of Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. The failed naval operation left some 34,000 British soldiers dead – while another 78,500 were wounded and a further 7,500 were captured or left missing. 27. The failure in Gallipoli would haunt Churchill for the rest of his life. Many Second World War historians believe his determination to avoid invading France until he was assured he had a strong chance of success. An emotional Churchill confided to General Marshall in 1943, "I see the sea full of corpses". 28. Sir Winston Churchill proposed to three different women during his twenties – all of whom refused. He did however remain friends with all three women. 29. Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier less than a month after the pair announced their engagement. The ceremony took place in St Margaret’s Church in Westminster, London on Tuesday 11 August 1908. Together the couple would have five children together – Diana, Randolph, Sarah Tuchet-Jesson, Marigold and Mary Soames. 30. Throughout their 57 years of marriage, the bond between the Churchills remained strong. The couple would often send one another affectionate letters during long periods of absence – sometimes decorated with handdrawn illustrations. The pair also had pet names – she was his "Kat" and he was her "Pug".

GETTY A keen painter, Churchill produced almost 600 works of art during his lifetime

31. Churchill was a prolific painter and produced almost 600 works of art during his lifetime. Sarah Thomas, of Sotheby's told the BBC the wartime Prime Minister took up painting very late as he "found relief from all the pressures of his work in his painting". 32. Lady Randolph Churchill hated her son's habit of smoking cigars – and despised seeing him waking in public with one in his mouth. When he was 15, she had tried to force a young Churchill to give up the habit. In a letter to her son, she pleaded: "If you knew how foolish and how silly you look doing it you would give it up, at least for a few years." She once promised to buy him a gun and a pony if he managed to give up smoking for six months. He agreed, stopped smoking and then promptly restarted six months later after winning the wager. 33. Churchill was so notorious for his smoking, he has a cuban cigar named in his honour. The Churchill is approximately 7inches long and 19mm wide. 34. 1922, Churchill found himself out of Parliament for the first time in twenty-two years. After losing his seat in the General Election, he retired and moved to the South of France to take up writing. 35. Just two years after his 'retirement' Sir Winston Churchill returned to politics – and was named Chancellor of the Exchequer. 36. At the outbreak of the Second World War on September 3 1939, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet – when the Board of the Admiralty were informed they immediately sent a signal to the Fleet simply stating: "Winston is back." 37. Churchill became Prime Minister of a national government on 10 May 1940 – the same day Hitler invaded France and the Low Countries. He was 65-years-old when he took office. 38. It is said that Winston Churchill was the only person whom Field Marshal Montgomery would allow to smoke in his presence. 39. The summer of 1940 was labelled by Sir Winston Churchill as Britain’s "finest hour" – despite many believing at the time that victory against the advancing Nazi army would be impossible. 40. Churchill's first speech to parliament as Prime Minister was the famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" address. One historian said the House of Commons, which had ignored and mocked Churchill during the 1930s was "now listening, and cheering".

GETTY A Cherbourg dock worker lights Winston Churchill's cigar during a tour of the town

GETTY Churchill became Prime Minister the same day Hitler invaded France

41. Sir Winston Churchill was an incredibly emotional man. He would often breakdown into sobs during meeting when he was given bad news and in many of his broadcast speeches he can be heard holding back tears. 42. Prime Minister Churchill visited the White House just before Christmas in 1941. The secretive 24-day visit made quite an impact on staff – who had to adjust to the 67-year-olds eccentricities. Chief Usher J.B. West recalled, "We got used to his 'jumpsuit,' the extraordinary one-piece uniform he wore every day, but the servants never quite got over seeing him naked in his room when they'd go up to serve brandy. It was the jumpsuit or nothing. In his room, Mr. Churchill wore no clothes at all most of the time during the day." 43. Physician Lord Charles Moran revealed in his book that Churchill suffered from clinical depression throughout his life. Churchill called it his "Black Dog". 44. After it was announced that the Second World War was over, Churchill shouted to a huge crowd gathered in Whitehall: "This is your victory." to which the mass of people shouted back: "No, it is yours". Sir Winston Churchill then conducted them in the singing of "Land of Hope and Glory". 45. Churchill was a fan of a drink, in particular Champagne. He said of it: "I could not live without Champagne. In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it."

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