Friday, April 9, 2010

Happy Winston Churchill day

Today is Winston Churchill Day, and no, I am not making this up. I do, however, suspect it is only Winston Churchill Day in the U.S. because today is the day Churchill was made an honorary citizen.  [Quiz: who else has been made an honorary citizen?  Also: did you know we made people honorary citizens?  I'll put the answer to the first question in the comments tomorrow; my answer to the first question is, "I had no idea."]

Winston Churchill himself is more real and immediate to me as I am finishing up Troublesome Young Men. In my reading life, as far as I'm concerned Chamberlain is still Prime Minister and I am worried SICK about England. Why they didn't make Churchill P.M. long since I do not know. Plus Chamberlain's folks are trying to pin the Norway debacle on Churchill who is First Lord of the Admiralty. I am quite certain that Britain is going to get creamed.

No, don't tell me what happens. I'm just glad to know that Churchill made it safely to the U.S. after Hitler invaded and that we allowed him to stay, probably in some very kindly rehab unit.

I'll report when I finish the book. As you can guess, I'm enjoying it a lot; it's quite engrossing.

1 comment:

LKT said...

Here's Wikipedia's helpful summary of Honorary Citizens of the U.S.:

The recipients are:

* General Lafayette, a Frenchman who was an officer in the American Revolution. On 28 December 1784 the Maryland General Assembly honored Lafayette. He was made an honorary citizen of Maryland again in 1823, as well as of Connecticut the same year. He was also recognized as an honorary citizen in a 2002 joint congressional resolution.
* Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister (1963)
* Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat who rescued Jews in the Holocaust, posthumously (1981)
* William Penn, 17th and 18th century English proprietor and governor of the English North American colony of Pennsylvania, posthumously (1984)
* Hannah Callowhill Penn, second wife of William Penn and administrator of Pennsylvania, posthumously (1984) [I presume this means she was honored posthumously, not that she administered PA posthumously. -LT]
* Mother Teresa, Albanian Catholic nun, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in India (1996)
* Kazimierz PuĊ‚aski, a Polish soldier, member of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobility and politician who has been called "The Father of the American Cavalry," posthumously (2009)