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Winston Churchill

1874 CE – 1965 CE

Retrace Winston Churchill's life across the map — 15 events in chronological order, from a cinematic flythrough to a full timeline.

Life journey

1. Battle of Ekeren1703 CE
   The Battle of Ekeren, which took place on 30 June 1703, was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. A Bourbon army of around 24,000 men, consisting of troops from France, Spain and Cologne, surrounded a smaller Dutch force of 12,000 men, which however managed to break out and retire to safety.
2. Mahdist War1881 CE
   The Mahdist War was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, who had proclaimed himself the "Mahdi" of Islam, and the forces of the Khedivate of Egypt, initially, and later the forces of Britain. After four years, the Mahdist rebels overthrew the Ottoman-Egyptian administration with the fall of Khartoum and gained control over Sudan. The Mahdist State launched several unsuccessful invasions of their neighbours, expanding the scale of the conflict to also include the Italian Empire, the Congo Free State and the Ethiopian Empire. They also faced significant internal rebellion, and a major famine.
3. Battle of Gallabat1889 CE
   The Battle of Gallabat, also known as the Battle of Metemma, was fought on 9–10 March 1889 during the Mahdist War between the Mahdist Sudanese and Ethiopian forces. It is a critical event in Ethiopian history because Nəgusä Nägäst Yohannes IV was killed in this battle, and because it was the last major battle on the Ethiopian front of the Mahdist War. The fighting occurred at the site of the twin settlements of Gallabat and Metemma.
4. Siege of Malakand1897 CE
   The siege of Malakand was the 26 July – 2 August 1897 siege of the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial British India's North West Frontier Province. The British faced a force of Pashtun tribesmen whose tribal lands had been bisected by the Durand Line, the 1,519 mile (2,445 km) border between Afghanistan and British India drawn up at the end of the Anglo-Afghan wars to help hold back what the British feared to be the Russian Empire's spread of influence towards the Indian subcontinent.
5. Battle of Abu Hamed1897 CE
   The Battle of Abu Hamed occurred on 7 August 1897 between a flying column of Anglo-Egyptian soldiers under Major-General Sir Archibald Hunter and a garrison of Mahdist rebels led by Mohammed Zain. The battle was a victory for the Anglo-Egyptian forces, and secured for the British the strategically vital town of Abu Hamed, which was the terminus for trade and transportation across the Nubian Desert.
6. Tonypandy Riots1910 CE
   The Tonypandy riots were a series of violent confrontations between striking coal miners and police that took place in November 1910 in the Rhondda valley of South Wales during the Cambrian Combine strike, culminating in the deployment of the military.
7. Cambrian Combine strike1910 CE
   Coal miners in South Wales staged a major strike in 1910-1911 over wages and working conditions, culminating in violent confrontations with police and the deployment of military forces. The strike began as a dispute over payment rates for working a difficult coal seam at the Ely Pit in Penygraig but escalated into one of the most significant labour conflicts in Welsh history.
8. 1911 Liverpool general transport strike1911 CE
   The 1911 Liverpool general transport strike, also known as the great transport workers' strike, involved dockers, railway workers, sailors and other tradesmen. The strike paralysed Liverpool commerce for most of the summer of 1911. It also transformed trade unionism on Merseyside. For the first time, general trade unions were able to establish themselves on a permanent footing and become genuine mass organisations of the working class.
9. Gallipoli Campaign1915 CE
   The Gallipoli campaign, the Dardanelles campaign, the Defence of Gallipoli or the Battle of Gallipoli was a military campaign in the First World War on the Gallipoli Peninsula from 19 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. The Allied powers unsuccessfully attempted to make the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, capitulate by taking control of the Turkish straits. They intended to expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople to bombardment by Allied warships and cut it off from the Asian part of the empire. An Ottoman Empire defeat could have led to unfettered Western control of the Suez Canal and the opening of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Allied supplies headed for the Black Sea and warm-water ports in Russia.
10. Sikorski–Mayski agreement1941 CE
    The Sikorski–Mayski agreement was a treaty between the Soviet Union and Polish government-in-exile that was signed in London on 30 July 1941. Its name is taken from its two most notable signatories: the prime minister of Poland, Władysław Sikorski, and the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ivan Mayski.
11. Clydebank Blitz1941 CE
    The Clydebank Blitz was a pair of air raids conducted by the Luftwaffe on the shipbuilding and munition-making town of Clydebank in Scotland. The bombings took place in March 1941.
12. Dekemvriana1944 CE
    The Dekemvriana refers to a series of clashes fought during World War II in Athens from 3 December 1944 to 11 January 1945. The conflict was the culmination of months of tension between the left-wing EAM, some parts of its military arm, the ELAS, stationed in Athens, the KKE and the OPLA from one side and from the other side, the Greek Government, some parts of the Hellenic Royal Army, the Hellenic Gendarmerie, the Cities Police, the Organization X, among others and also the British Army.
13. Potsdam Conference1945 CE
    The Potsdam Conference was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from 17 July to 2 August 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They were represented respectively by General Secretary Joseph Stalin, prime ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
14. Malayan Emergency1948 CE
    The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War, (1948–1960) was a guerrilla war fought in Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya and the Commonwealth. The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a communist state, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to protect British economic and colonial interests and combat communism. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars.
15. 1953 Iranian coup d'état1953 CE
    On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état that strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. In the months preceding the coup, Mosaddegh had consolidated power by orchestrating a referendum to dissolve parliament that was widely described as fraudulent, and he later refused to step down after the Shah attempted to dismiss him as prime minister. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the name Operation Boot and the United States (CIA), under the name TP-AJAX Project or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country's oil industry.

Event data from Wikipedia/Wikidata (CC-BY-SA). Spotted a mistake? Email [email protected].