The actor would later comment on the near-incident in his memoir, imagining how disappointed they would be to learn he was born in London.
Tragedy was actually a surprisingly frequent occurrence for the comedic actor who had several brushes with death, including his famous stunt work, like in The Gold Rush, or the time he was unwittingly involved in a botched assassination plot during his 1932 visit to Japan.
Seishi Koga, who headed the operation to overthrow the Japanese government by killing its prime minister, who was with Chaplin at the time, claimed in court that also taking out the beloved film star, “would cause a war with America, and thus we could kill two birds with a single stone.”