The Tale of Two Men

One evening at the turn of the 19th century, a British Member of Parliament was hurrying through rain and fog in the Scottish countryside to deliver an important speech when his carriage ran off the road. With its wheels caught axle-deep in mud, the carriage simply could not be moved, even when the politician, though dressed in typically aristocratic attire, left the carriage to lend a hand.

Fortunately, a young Scottish farm boy happened to pass with a team of horses and volunteered to help. With a great deal of effort, the carriage was finally pulled free and returned to the road. When the boy steadfastly refused to accept compensation for his help (or for his soiled clothes), the Englishman asked him about his plans for the future. "I want to be a doctor," the lad replied. So impressed was the gentleman that he promptly offered to help and, thanks to his generosity, the young man attended university.

More than fifty years later, Winston Churchill became dangerously ill with pneumonia in Morocco. His life was saved by a new wonder drug, penicillin, which had been discovered several years before by a Scottish-born physician named Sir Alexander Fleming.

Fleming, of course, was the farm boy who had helped the Member of Parliament on that rainy night in Scotland half a century before. And the Member of Parliament? He was none other than Winston Churchill's father, Randolph!