The dignity of work

Winston Churchill was broke and needed a bailout. Mikhail Gorbachev did a Pizza Hut commercial. Here's what happens when smart people need to swallow their pride. Plus 7 other things worth reading.

When Nazi Germany invaded France, and Winston Churchill became the prime minister of Great Britain, he had a big personal problem: He was flat broke.

Between his debts and overdue taxes and even the interest he had to pay "on his large overdraft," according to Mark Archer in The Wall Street Journal, he was in big trouble.

Fortunately, an Austrian-born English banker named Sir Henry Strakosch, came to the rescue, writing a check for £5,000, the equivalent today of about $250,000, so that Churchill's financial problems wouldn't divert him from the enormous task at hand.

Another story. By the late 1990s, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, had lost all of his savings.

"I can explain it with pleasure because I have no problem with that," he said in an interview later (link is a video). "I had some financial problems ... so I did an advertisement for Pizza Hut."

Yes. Pizza Hut. (If you don’t see the video below, please enable images.)