Winston Churchill Goes Backward Down a Water Slide & Loses His Trunks (1934)

World-chang­ing fig­ures can have their lighter moments too. Just wit­ness Win­ston Churchill above, tak­ing a trip to the French Riv­iera in 1934 and slid­ing back­ward down a water slide, only to lose his swim trunks at the end. The pre­vi­ous­ly unseen clip comes from the Churchill fam­i­ly archives and founds its way into a Smith­son­ian doc­u­men­tary in 2021.

via @Fasc1nate

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Win­ston Churchill’s Paint­ings: Great States­man, Sur­pris­ing­ly Good Artist

Win­ston Churchill Gets a Doctor’s Note to Drink “Unlim­it­ed” Alco­hol in Pro­hi­bi­tion Amer­i­ca (1932)

Ani­mat­ed: Win­ston Churchill’s Top 10 Say­ings About Fail­ure, Courage, Set­backs, Haters & Suc­cess


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Comments (4)
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  • Richinto says:

    Those aren’t his trunks float­ing at the end of the clip. Look­ing at the time between 0:05 and 0:07 it is clear he is rid­ing on a large, rec­tan­gu­lar pad of some sort, and this is what bobs to the sur­face at the end of the clip. His trunks would not be buoy­ant enough to float to the sur­face.

  • John says:

    Not his trunks. It’s the mat that he slides down on. Watch the start you can see it under his shoul­der once in the water it will just float to the top

  • john pimm says:

    This clip is in (in b+w) the CHURCHILLS BODYGUARD series the BBC did. It ‘must pre­date 2021’, I ‘always thought it was his shorts because he looks so embarassed. ?

  • john pimm says:

    Hav­ing looked at CHURCHILLS BODYGUARD again episode near­ly killed in new york, I think it is a sim­i­lar but dif­fer­ent clip, but still the float.

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