Four Degrees of Separation

[ElectricBlue]

How far away are you away from great people?

Examples:

My father knew his grandfather who knew Jenny Marx, whose father was Karl Marx.

I own a Taschen book about Stanley Kubrick, which has twelve frames from his personal copy of 2001, A Space Odyssey.

I once met George Meuller, a leading Apollo program manager, who put Neil Armstrong on the moon.

What I really wanted was to have some linear relationship with the guys who designed Stonehenge. It seems more likely that my ancestors were living in the middle of an Irish bog at the time, which is a little disappointing. So I'll settle for some distant connection with the Seven Kings of Ireland, and the legend of the Red Right Hand.

 

[49greg]

I'm really really far from anybody famous. But I did share the first class cabin of a Boeing 707 with Tennessee Ernie Ford and his family on a flight from Honolulu to San Francisco back in the sixties.

 

[rjordan]

How far away are you away from great people?

Years ago I was a speaker at an automotive trade show in McCormick Place in Chicago. They arranged a reservation for me at the Chicago Ritz-Carlton. When I checked in, there was no reservation and no available rooms. Nothing was available in the whole town.

I was furious, but I hid it. I told them, "Fine, I'll be over there," pointing to a sitting area. I opened my suitcase and started laying out my clothes for the morning. Socks and underwear on a side table. Toilet kit on the coffee table. An assistant manager or someone came over and asked what I was doing. It told him I would be fine sleeping right here on the sofa. He had a fit. More assistants came over telling me I was making a scene. I told them I wasn't, but they could solve it by finding me a room.

Fifteen minutes later, they had me packed up and in a limo on the way to a lesser hotel in the suburbs, but it was comped. I had no car so I told them to have the limo ready for me in the morning to take me to McCormack Place. Damn if they didn't.

I wonder how many degrees of separation between some really famous people and the "guy in his underwear" at the Ritz-Carlton.

rj

 

[sr71plt]

One of my grandmothers knew and hobnobbed with Ford, Edison, and J.C. Penny. On the other hand she also was the mistress of a McCarthyite U.S. senator, so that's enough of that looking into that knowing people thing.

 

[Hypoxia]

1st and 2nd degree: Political folk, major musicians and athletes, software legends and billionaires, etc, but I won't drop names.

 

[JKendallDane]

One of my ancestors was a signer of the Constitution and later became one of the first Speakers of the House. His great grandson help found the Republican party and was their first VP candidate.

My Grandfather owned the farm next door to the one Cy Young's parents owned. My Dad and uncles were all taught how to pitch by Cy during his visits home.

When I was in Boy Scouts forty plus years ago, I had Neil Armstrong as a merit badge counselor.

.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My ex and I had afternoon tea with one of the lead scientists of the Manhattan Project; he was a friend of the ex's family.

 

[Handley_Page]

What I really wanted was to have some linear relationship with the guys who designed Stonehenge. It seems more likely that my ancestors were living in the middle of an Irish bog at the time, which is a little disappointing. So I'll settle for some distant connection with the Seven Kings of Ireland, and the legend of the Red Right Hand.

Good Luck with the connection to Stonehenge.
You might try Maive of Con naught or even Cuchulain (sorry I cannot spell).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Good Luck with the connection to Stonehenge.
You might try Maive of Con naught or even Cuchulain (sorry I cannot spell).

It's a complete non-starter. On my father's side I go back through the Scots to the Irish, on my mother's side straight to the Irish.

It's the nebulous connection to old Karl is the one I like. I'm an old leftie from way back - my dad was a Marxist out of the LSE, and my middle name is in honour of my great grandfather, the one who knew Jenny Marx.

 

[oggbashan]

One of maternal ancestors, a woman with a very unusual name living in a quiet Suffolk village at the end of the 18th Century, had twelve children all of whom married and had children (an average of 10 children each) all of whom married and had chldren...

Another person descended from her worked out a couple of years ago that there were 2,500 living people descended from that one woman. They live in England (of course), Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and a few are in other countries as well.

But there are still 50 of them in that quiet Suffolk village. Most of her local descendants and herself used to live to great ages by 19th Century norms. She died aged 89.

The only reason we know this is because her name was so unusual that anyone who finds her close to their family tree ALWAYS includes her in that tree and the links sprout all over Ancestry.com.

 

[tryn2Bgood]

Hmm...Great people or Famous people?

Aren't we supposedly able to be linked to everyone in the world by six degrees of separation?

 

[quietlylooking]

I trained under someone who later won a Nobel prize.

Ancestry.com says I'm a distant cousin of Elvis Presley.

 

[SusanJillParker]

My claim to fame.

The late, great Dr. Robert Parker of Spencer for Hire Fame with Robert Urich and Blue Bloods with Tom Sellick was my uncle.

I never knew until I met him later in life. He was teaching at Boston University and Northeastern University. We became friends first before we discovered we were related.

Long story short, my mother wasn't big on family and neither was the family big on her with her being a drunk, a stripper, a prostitute, and an all around whore, including an incestuous whore with her having sex with my four, much older brothers before I was even born.

I suspect on of my brothers was my father. How's that for fucked up. No wonder why no one wanted anything to do with her or her children.

 

[werdsmith]

One of my great-great-greats (x12 or so) fought with George Washington in the Revolution.

 

[Kimikimidoll]

I stay at home and try not to be related to anyone, lest their amazingness rubs off on me.

I should say something more thoughtful...

nahh..

 

[ElectricBlue]

Aren't we supposedly able to be linked to everyone in the world by six degrees of separation?

That's the theory. My examples suggest 2 or 3 hand-shakes is all that's needed to get close to someone noteworthy in the last hundred years. Here's one I'd forgotten:

I know my brother, he and a bunch of school mates crawled under a fence in 1970 and chatted to twenty year old Princess Anne. Her mum's the Queen, who was up front with all the dignitaries. Anne was down the back of the tent, bored, talking to bunch of fifteen year old lads. That's Aussie for ya, not high on protocol.

So three steps of separation from Her Maj

 

[Hypoxia]

So three steps of separation from Her Maj

My son-in-law was personal chef for a software gazillionaire who entertained with Tromp so I'm three steps away from doom. But an equal distance from Wyatt Earp, Louis Armstrong, Charles Manson, and Madonna. I dunno if they balance out.

 

[Handley_Page]

I think Pooh Bah could trace his line back to an Amoeba or something.

 

[rubydlite]

My aunt dated Donald Sutherland (father of Kiefer Sutherland) who has hobnobbed with many actors.

My great aunt was employed as a royal seamstress

Although it's more than 4 generations or connections I'm a descendant of Captain Cook

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I think my pedigree is better than the Queen's. We share many common ancestors.

In America some of my ancestors were important enough with their contributions to medical science and several American institutions, but wont recognize their names. tho you'd know the names of their closest friends and relations. And plenty of my ancestors were common m mechanics. Two of them built railroads.

 

[dlcalguy]

My mother shared a train carriage with the pop group Scaffold once. They included Roger McGough, one of the "Liverpool poets" of the 60s, and Mike McGear who is Paul McCartney's brother. (She had no clue who they were until I explained, but said they were very nice, polite young gentlemen.)
And I've taken voice-acting class with Bob Bergen who is the current voice of Porky Pig.
That's all, folks.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Not to be too much of a wet blanket, but the rough theory is that any two people are 6 or less steps apart. (There are some obvious counter-examples (isolated tribes, etc.) but in general where there's internet the idea holds up very well. Even before that... this was a neat experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment .)

Given that, if you aren't within 4 such steps of someone famous (since I'm not sure how the OP quantified "great"), you're living in a cave. I'm one from a well known actress, two from a truly famous math dude. It's not impressive - you can't HELP it.

 

[CyranoJ]

How far away are you away from great people?

I used to work with someone who is now a cabinet minister in my province.

Facebook informed me, at the height of the Jian Gomeshi trial in Canada, that Jian was "someone I may know" because I know people who were connected with his old band, Moxy Fruvous. That was... awkward.

On account of an old job, I have directly interacted with people like Richard Ford, Guy Gavriel Kay, Austin Clarke, Larry Hill, Joseph Boyden, Robert Sawyer, Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler. So I guess that counts as a species of connection.

 

[SamScribble]

My ex and I had afternoon tea with one of the lead scientists of the Manhattan Project; he was a friend of the ex's family.

Long, long ago, one of the more junior scientists on the Manhattan Project taught me stats.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Given that, if you aren't within 4 such steps of someone famous (since I'm not sure how the OP quantified "great"), you're living in a cave. I'm one from a well known actress, two from a truly famous math dude. It's not impressive - you can't HELP it.

"Great" as in someone who achieved something of significance in their field - hence my examples.

"Famous" does not necessarily mean the same thing; for example, many television "celebrities" are temporarily famous (infamous, or fifteen minutes) but they are not great in my meaning of the word.

The interesting connectivity for me is how few people are needed to go back a long way in history - for an old leftie like me to be one family step away from Karl is better than seeing his headstone in Highgate Cemetery.