History Changed by Inches

Sometimes history is changed by the smallest of circumstances. Though many don’t stop to consider it, three of the most important political figures of the past 100 years almost didn’t realize their greatest accomplishments because of a few inches.

Today, almost everyone knows about the most recent example: the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. During a campaign rally, a bullet fired from a nearby rooftop nicked the President’s ear when he turned suddenly, thus avoiding certain death if the bullet had struck him a few inches closer to his head.

But the other two examples have been almost entirely forgotten, despite the fact of how much history would have been changed if a few inches had not saved them from an early and violent death.

On December 13, 1931, a well-known and controversial figure in British politics, looking the wrong way, stepped off a curb on New York’s Fifth Avenue and was hit by an oncoming car. Winston Churchill was in the United States on a lecture tour, and because automobiles in England travel on the left side of the road, he instinctively looked the wrong way when crossing the street in New York.

He did suffer serious injuries and was in the hospital for several days followed by weeks of recovery in a nursing home. But by inches, he had avoided being killed in the accident.

Churchill had by 1931 already become a controversial and newsworthy figure, beginning with his experiences in the Boer War and his service as First Lord of the Admiralty prior to World War I. (During the latter, he made an historic decision to change the British naval fleet from coal-burning engines to oil-burning engines, an act which in itself eventually led the world to develop a major dependence on oil.)

But when Churchill was nearly killed in 1931, his forewarning about Hitler and Nazism was still ahead of him (Hitler didn’t take power in Germany until two years later), as well as his pivotal role as an Allied leader in World War II. Who knows if Britain would have survived the Nazi onslaught had it not had the stubborn and uncompromising Churchill to spur it forward in the face of the Blitz.

The other great Allied leader of that war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also survived by inches his own brush with death before he took office.

On January 15, 1933, President-elect Roosevelt, who had just won the epic 1932 U.S. election against incumbent President Herbert Hoover, was visiting Miami, Florida, prior to taking office. The economic crisis resulting from the stock market crash in 1929 had become a serious Depression, and a banking crisis was looming.

Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who had not initially supported Roosevelt for the Democrats’ 1932 nomination, had also traveled to Miami to meet with Roosevelt and make amends. The president-elect responded by inviting Cermak to sit with him in an open car traveling through the streets of Miami with crowds cheering Roosevelt.

Suddenly, an assassin stepped in front of the car and fired several shots at Roosevelt. But at the last moment, a woman grabbed the shooter’s arm and caused him, by inches, to miss the president-elect – but some bullets hit Cermak sitting next to him, killing him instantly.

Only weeks later, on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt would be sworn in as president and would give his famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” Inaugural Address. He then resolved the banking crisis that some thought could result in a revolution. Ahead was also his election to an unprecedented three more terms, as well as his leadership with Prime Minister Churchill of the Allied forces that won World War II.

Churchill and Roosevelt were two of the greatest world figures of the last century. Although he is only in the early months of his second term, it is clear that Donald Trump is already one of the most important political figures of the present time following his unprecedented political comeback last year, and his spectacular accomplishments so far this year.

All three of these political leaders narrowly avoided an early death prior to making their most important achievements. All three also survived because of just a few inches – stepping off a curb, sitting in a car, and standing on an open stage.

Some may call it random chance, some may call it fate, while others may call it an act of God. Regardless, when considering the prospect of no Prime Minister Winston Churchill, no President Franklin Roosevelt, no second term President Donald Trump, it is unimaginable how history would have happened without them.

Barry Casselman is an AMAC Newsline contributor.