Barack Obama and Brad Pitt Are Cousins? YUP!
Sing it Sister Sledge! “We are family…I got all my sisters with me“, and cousins 9 times removed! Now I never understood all the seven cousins once and twice removed business in geneology….
But, below are some really unique (to say the least) celebrity and political family ties from Ancestry.com. Enjoy!
George Bush and Dick Cheney
They’re ninthcousins, one time removed. Common ancestors are William and Lydia Fletcher, both born around 1622.(figures! evil breeds evil.)
George Bush and Hugh Hefner
They’re 11th cousins, twice removed. Bush’s 10th great-grandfather and Hefner’s eighth great-grandfather was Thomas Richards, who died around 1650. (Once a playboy, always a playboy, although Hef is WAY cooler than Bush could ever hope to be)
Britney Spears and John Edwards
Seventh cousins three times removed. Their common ancestor was John Stovall, born in Virginia around 1705. (Why can I believe this one?)
Barack Obama and Brad Pitt
Ninth cousins. They share the same ancestor, Edwin Hickman, who was born in 1690. Edwin’s son Edwin Jr. is Brad Pitt’s seventh great-grandfather (that’s great great great great great great great grandfather.) Edwin’s other son, James, is Obama’s seventh great-grandfather, on his mother’s side. (Oh won’t Angelina and Brad being tickled about this one! puke!)
Princess Diana and Sarah Palin
Both share the same ninth great grandfather John Strong, who was born in England 1605. (yikes, she will never hold a candle to Princess Di)
Princess Di and Andrew Firestone
10th cousin to Andrew Firestone, (from reality show The Bachelor, who cares).
Tom Hanks and Abraham Lincoln
They are related some way, but they didn’t list exactly how, either way, totally believable — they’re both awesome fellows!
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles
Blood relatives–ninth cousins once removed. (This one really made me snicker! Oh Hai Queen! )
Richard Nixon and James Dean
Seventh cousins, once removed. (Say it isn’t so!)
FDR and Sarah Palin
Ninth cousins, once removed. (Weird, very weird.)
Some Snippets from Forbes:
Move over, Google. Another Web outfit is digitizing millions of documents and making them available online.
That site is Ancestry.com, and its parent company is racking up nearly $200 million a year charging people to peruse scanned family-history documents–things like birth and marriage records, but also more obscure databases like immigration records and draft-registration cards.
One tactic is using its team of in-house genealogy researchers to find interesting family links between celebrities, royalty and politicians. Some recent discoveries include genealogical links between Barack Obama and Brad Pitt, Sarah Palin and Franklin Roosevelt, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Genealogist Anastasia Tyler, who has done some of the celebrity work for Ancestry.com, says it’s easiest to find common ties among people who have deep roots in the United States or in the British royal family. For celebrities and regular folk, most of the best family records date from 1850 to 1930. Before 1850, records were scarcer. After 1930, detailed records become tougher to find because of privacy concerns, Tyler says.
One particularly rich mine for family-history buffs are World War I and World War II draft registration cards, she adds. In 1917 and 1918 alone, about 24 million U.S. men registered for the draft–meaning researchers are very likely to find a hit scouring World War I records for a male relative who was of draftable age at that time.
Another thing the article said which I do NOT agree with:
Sometimes those records even yield dirt on a celebrity. According to Tyler, Tom Cruise’s great grandfather was described as “short, stout and bald” on his draft card. Guess the apple fell pretty far from that tree.”
Excuse me? The apple fell far from the tree?
Tom IS short, and he IS starting to bald, AND perhaps if it wasn’t for Scientology’s dangerous and kooky Purification Rundown of ingesting niacin vitamin bombs and oil, I think Cruise would still have that spare tire he picked up after marrying his child bride/fembot.
Besides when he played Les Grossman, in Tropic Thunder, the picture below could be alternate future for our boy Cruise. Time can be cruel Tom. Seems like the apples are a little bit more in reach now? (Of course nothing that some nips and tucks and fasting can’t take care of, right Tom? wink wink)
We all know how much Tom looooooved when this picture was leaked. So here yah go again Tom!
Source: Queen
