The Danny Dyer episode was the best ever in my opinion. He met an aristocratic cousin and until the English Civil War, both families were equal but after the conflict Dyers family fell so low, descendents ended up in the workhouse.
The Patrick Stewart discovery of his father's PTSD is heartbreaking. There was very little understanding of shellshock in those days and many people who fought for their country bore this horrible condition for the rest of their lives. Very sad.
At least he was left with some insight into WHY his father was so angry. It makes sense. When I found out how my father was treated as a child (as an adult) I came to realize where the inspiration came from. It allows me to understand, and to hurt less.
My grandfather fought in the Rif war and a few years after, was called for WW2, and from what my mother and her siblings said about him, he most likely suffered from some kind of PTSD. A constantly angry and bitter man, who couldn't stand anyone not doing as he says and stepping out of line. Apparently not really violent, but not a fun person. We recently learned that he ended up killing himself in the 60s, which made things even worse when the traumatized super catholic stay at home mom suddenly has to take car of four kids and the fear of what people might think of this terrible sin...
@@lincliff663 Absolutely, the consequences of the war are still felt here. My town (Dunkirk) was pretty much flattened after the war, and only a few old buildings remained. They kept all the bullet impacts on the church. They reconstructed it in a very modernist fashion that hasn't aged well. But for my familiy, it resulted in odd behaviours in my mom and her siblings, things that shouldn't be very important became primordial and could lead to extreme meltdowns and fear. On the other side of my family, it was quite different, but still very impactful. My grandmother was austrian during the Anschluss, and we recently found out the NSDAP asked my family there to release a document proving they didn't have jewish ancestry for five generations...who knows what happened to those who had some jewish ancestor.
This program was a revelation to me. As I sat and watched it it was like a jigsaw piecing together in front of my eyes. For the first time I saw my own father in context. I just sat and cried. We owe so much to that generation who sacrificed themselves, in every way and mostly because of the propaganda of the day. Those in power pushing for war. Unfortunately we have all been a victim of this in the last three years. This time we are fighting for freedom from the oppressors who are within our own government, who still think propaganda works.
took a dna test to surprise my father with our Italian family tree. turns out i wasnt Italian so before i told him, i bought my father a test... just to make sure we are still related ;) turns out he wasnt Italian either! on to his brothers..... Oh No Grandma what did you do ;) turns out my grandmother had a couple of affairs. her oldest boy was from her husband, second was from an unknown man (my uncle doesnt want to know who) and my father's biological father was the landlord who lived upstairs! great episode!
I'm half northern Italian and my dna on that side is about 20 percent Italian and the rest Germanic European..Lots of invading went on and in my case Frederick Barbarossa went ham on my ancestors town.😁
I know several Italian immigrants that were sterile and their wives became pregnant and the mwn dealt with it so they would have a child. No invitro back then
@@saracarson8835 It can also come from the relatives of the landlord without having the landlord to submit his own DNA. I feel so sorry for the grandpa thinking his wife is faithful and monogamous but turns out she isn't faithful at all. This why paternity testing needs to be done at all hospitals within all countries before being able to sign the birth certificate, so as women won't be able to commit paternity fraud and making a man pay for children that is not his biological without any say like how the posters grandma did if paternity testing was done before signing the birth certificate. Not only is paternity fraud not healthy psychology when people find out the truth but it's also not good medically since many diseases and disorders are through genetics. It's very selfish whenever any woman commits paternity fraud and should be held accountable for committing fraud in the first place.
I think my favourite of all 'shocks' was Patsy Kensit. Having found an ancestor who was a clergyman, she went to his old church and then asked "so was he buried in the grounds?" as in the cemetery outside. The answer was "sort of, yes but he's not buried outside", it's then revealed that she's been stood on top of his grave!!
I had a college professor who told us that every English person could trace their family back to royalty. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels true every time I watch the British version of Who Do You Think You Are
As a Marine with PTSD who’s father also suffered as a WWII veteran, I feel for Sir Patrick. To quote General Lee, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
Why care about the illegitimate behavior of kings. Fifteen times removed etc. It was Lady Judi Dench ancestry that explains her Shakespearean link. LOVE it!
Found out my "cousin" is really my half sister and I have 2 more siblings in my mother's country of birth that she abandoned before moving away and never spoke of. Ancestry DNA told all her secrets! Not "all" really, I'm sure I'll find out she was born a dolphin or something if I keep looking 😩
Your comment made me think of Jack Nicholson who found out in a press junket that his “sister” was his mother. She was very young when she fell pregnant so to avoid shame due to the era, his grandmother raised him. A random journalist found it out but presumed Jack knew. Unfortunately both were dead by the time he learned it.
Families are “funny” things…my wife’s great-great grandfather from Oslo literally (and I literary mean literally) had 2 families on different sides of the street and on the same block! She discovered this through public records after she started getting DNA results for people she didn’t have in her family records. And as best she can tell, they were not aware of one another. She’s connected with the “other” family members and they hadn’t heard of her family.
Cheer up .... i'm in my late 50s - a girl I had a crush on when I was in high school told me to get lost after one date.... about 3 years ago she contacts me and tells me she has done some digging and found we are related.... imagine if it had worked out between us all those years ago..... we would have had to move to The South........
Ignore the comment in the video about a song from "Horrible Histories" Don't believe anything on "Horrible Histories". They get more history wrong than they get right.
In researching my family, I found that my second great grandmother (1) had divorced twice in the turn of the last century, (2) tried to run with her daughters to Canada when she lost custody of them to her first ex, (3) IMO bribed that ex to gain custody of both her daughters and her sons, (4) ran a barbershop across the street from the Chicago stockyards, (5) after divorce #2, moved to Montana’s gold mining country to first be a single woman homesteader and then run a restaurant while husband #3 ran a hotel, (6) moved with new hubs to Oklahoma where they became full-time Spiritualists-he was a “divine healer” while she was a trance medium ($1/reading) and pastor of a Spiritualist church operated out of their home. She was arrested for illegal fortune telling in 1920 and her unsuccessful appeal, on the grounds of infringement of her First Amendment right to freedom of religion, was reported across the country. I’m finishing researching her life now in preparation to write a book.
@@travelerforever8849 I know! And researching her kept adding levels of “She did WHAT?” First, I was intrigued by all of her last names on the genealogy website. Then I found a 1925 Oklahoma City directory entry for her and her third husband that seemed to give him the job of Minister, and I wondered how what I assumed was a conservative Christian pastor (given OK’s current status of being a very conservative state) explained having a wife with two ex-husbands walking around in 1925. Only later did I find the newspaper death notice that said that she was the pastor, not him, and it was a spiritualist church, which just blew my mind! I tried to research the church, found nothing, and went to my go-to source of the local library’s website. A local history librarian in OKC was amazing and sent me an entire folder of documents, maps, and newspaper articles that she found in a few hours online. I inherited from my grandmother some photos of her and her children, as well as a postcard she sent her youngest son (my great-grandfather) and her business card as a barber in 1899-1900 Chicago. Through that genealogy website, I connected with another of her great great granddaughters L and she had even more photos as well as access to family letters that she wrote or was mentioned in. L and I are still trying to pin down info on her second and third husbands. I have someone checking Chicago court records for her second divorce, since we have been unable to find that marriage record in either Michigan (where she was from originally) or Chicago. If we strike out there, I’ll try Montana divorce records in case she delayed filing until she moved across country. Otherwise, I might have to presume she never officially married husband #2! Husband #3 appears out of nowhere in 1906 Washington state owning a restaurant, then In Billings, MT in 1909 owning a lunch counter before becoming my ancestor’s farmhand in 1910 and marrying her in 1911. He has plenty of personal info on that marriage certificate, but none of it has produced any documentation of him anywhere. I suspect him of using a false name because of that utter failure to find him or his parents in any census records before 1910. Maybe he was a conman seeing a vulnerable older woman (she was 15 years older than him) with a fascination for Spiritualism he could exploit? I just don’t know.
Your great-grandmother was quite the lady! She proves we come from sturdy, creative stock!! When I think of the courage and sheer NERVE it would take to grab your children and book passage on a leaky wooden boat across the Atlantic to America, where everyone -- no matter your age or gender -- was expected to literally build a new life for themselves... And that was only the beginning! Someday, our many-great grandchildren will be boarding an exploratory flight from Earth to Alpha Centauri, and our many-great grandparents, wherever they are, will wipe away a tear and smile as they watch their descendants head off into deep space. Our species was born under a wandering star. We are the voyagers of the rafts, boats and starships of Earth, and our eternal mission is to bravely seek new worlds, new life and new civilizations. As we have always done, we boldly go where no one has gone before.
Literally sounds like such bullshit, whish is why so brilliant I can't wait to read this book this woman did everything it seems 🤣 incredible what you find out researching I very much would love to read this
My most exciting discovery was my 4th great grandfather who was captured by some Mohawk that took him to Canada and sold him to the British. He was taken at the raid on Royalton Vermont and his story is published on the internet if you search for the raid and the name George Avery. Another account was written for Zadock P Steele.
I've been researching my family tree for over 40 years, and I still get surprised by what I find. One of the first things I discovered was that my father was related to Charles Darwin. Then I found my mother was descended from King Edward III. In the last 5 years I've discovered that my mother has several step- and half- siblings (not sure how many, we're still finding them - 5 at the last count). Her grandfather's cousin was knighted for services to the law profession in India. One of her own cousins became a singer in the US and had his own radio show in the 1930s. I wonder if any of my family's descendants will be surprised by what the find out about us.
I’ve researched my family tree sporadically over the last two decades. My most surprising find was last summer when I followed a line on my mother’s side going directly back to King Charlemagne’s brother.
I discovered my ancestors was one of the few POW imprisoned after the Battle of Dunbar that survived his imprisonment. He was transported on the Unity in 1650 and was sold into service at a the Saugus Mass ironworks. He gained his freedom, married and made a good life for himself.
They just didn't look at enough people. 9 generation, and you have 1000s of ancestors. You'll find murder victims, rape victims, war dead, tortured, and enslaved ancestors, gamblers, whores, kings, prisonniers, crooks, drunks, and a whole lot of decent hard working people. I know bc I found over 800 men and women from 1675 and earlier of my own ancestors.
George wasn't mad. It's now widely accepted by many in the medical community that it is highly likely he suffered with bipolar. This was covered in a recent episode of Lucy Worsley Investigates.
I researched my family tree.. Richard Shakespeare is my 13th great grandfather... he is also William Shakespeare's grandfather.. William is my 1st cousin 13 times removed.
You do know that Star Wars is it a real thing and that is all made up right so how the Earth can you be related to a princess from bloody Star Wars you can’t be because it’s not a real character princess Leia isn’t a real character she’s a character has only exists in Star Wars please enlighten me God I’m still trying to work out how you on earth can you be related to a character that’s not real
My Mum got into researching her family tree about 10 years ago. Not a day would go by without her calling to let me know which famous person was apparently related to us. Notable highlights include Charlie Chaplin, Nelson Mandela, Ned Kelly, Vivian Leigh, Hans Christian Anderson, Benny Hill and Elvis. I guess the further back you go, and provided you go to the very ends of every branch and twig on the tree, we are all related to everyone. Odd that we could be related to almost every major painter, author and movie star, but there was no mention of Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or other notable monsters. Funny how that works. It's for that reason I appreciate that WDYTYA take a pretty direct path with their research- not too many sidesteps or (in my Mum's case) wild leaps in random directions. Got to say the producers are missing a trick: Eva Peron AND Monet?- my episode would be epic.
I sadly discovered one of my Gt. Grannies was put in a Victorian Lunatic Asylum in Ireland and I am related to the late Cranberries singer, Delores O'Riordan, her grandmother was my fathers cousin. I met her grannie in the 70s.. sweet lady and I recall her showing me Delores photo when she was tiny and talking about the musicians in that side of the family I knew my Father had an uncle who played the Irish fiddle so not surprising.
from al accounts I think there is afair chance one uncle and my Welsh grandfather had a form of PTSD, both war inflicted - 2nd and 1st world wars respectively. My Grandfather was injured at the front in 1918 with shrapnal wounds to his stomoch. he bore them for the rest of his life ans my uncle witnessed many tings including the decapitation of his friend, i think in Italy. My uncle was a tank driver in the Dragoon Guards and witnessed the Padre, his good friend, traveling on top of the tank in front get decapitated y a boob trap piano wire which the Germans had put across the road. that mut have caused his after problems. Antoher was on the burmah Railway .say no moor War is diabolical.
well, in the past there were less people on the planet, so it makes sense. They say everyone in Europe (and wherever Europeans went in history) are related to Charlemagne, for instance.
My Dad is from England and on this trip in March I spent time with my cousin, going over our family tree on my Granny’s side. We are related to Richard “Dick” Turpin. Not a royal but definitely interesting.
@@nillyk5671 How close in DNA are we to cats? Dogs aren't my problem, but my cats act like demigods and it confuses me and my dog. I had a genealogy test done and I am English and Welsh, it didn't mention Collie.
The mindblowing fact for me is the thought of exponential growth when looking backwards over a family tree. We all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents. Just taking into account biological parents and doubling each generation it only takes 10 generations to have a family tree 1024 people wide. 20 generations is over 1 million ancestors. The truly mindblowing part is that in 30 generations it is over 1 billion people. If you take a generation as around 25 years that means 30 generations take about 750 years. And here is the kicker.... 750 years ago the worlds population was estimated at less than 400 million. Someone please help before my melon explodes.
I suppose that's the usefulness of a constantly migrating population and extreme famines and pandemics that kill 50% of a country or even a continent's population
It's called shared ancestry. As you go up your family tree a lot of "branches" will end up at the same people. The human race is essentially one big incest party!
@@johnkean6852 spot on. I have extensively researched my family tree for years and almost all of us can link our tree up to royalty. The One World Tree was brilliant in enabling us to do this, but for some reason that no longer exists. So when people say they are descended from royalty they’re not unique they’d only be unique if they couldn’t.
I also know, that a few of my Scottish ancestors, were sent on a long sea voyage to Australia. I believe it’s called Penal Servitude. Their surname is Russell. Very popular name in Australia.
Here are some of mine Edward II is my 20th great-grandfather, Henry I is my 26th great-grandfather, Edward I is my 21st great-grandfather, Edward III is my 19th great-grandfather, Henry VIII is my 3rd cousin 15x removed, Catherine of Aragon is my 3rd cousin 16x removed, Anne Boleyn is my 1st cousin 15x removed, Jane Seymour is my 2nd cousin 15x removed, Katherine Howard is my 1st cousin 15x removed and Catherine Parr is my 1st cousin 14x removed.
Found out a few weeks ago that my uncle had a child he never knew about. She is 60 and there are only 7 cousins so we are so excited to have a new one! my uncle passed away last year so she never met him but he has an identical twin and she met him. My dad was the older brother of the twins
I'm descended from Henry VII & Elizabeth of York via daughter Mary. I also discovered that my high school bestie, whose sister was my sister's middle school bestie, was our second cousin! Same great-grandparents! THAT blew my mind!
Hey cousin 😂😂 I am 13th great grandson of John Stewart, prior of coldingham. He was the illegitimate son of King James V of Scotland and his mistress Elizabeth Carmichael. This would make John the grandsons of King James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, the sister of King Henry VIII of England.
@@jturn103 So you're a descendant of Henry VII & Elizabeth as well but via Margaret and I'm via Mary. Is that right? (Sorry, brain surgery two weeks ago so... basic thinking is a challenge.)
My Great-Grandmother (FFMM) was indigenous nomad, Ancestry originally from Jerusalem and alongside Templar/Cathar line, she smoked a pipe, which tickled me don't know what was in it! 😁 My surname is originally 'Moses' Tribe' we have been apparently discovered to be one of the lost tribes who also followed the Rose Line. My Great-great grandfather was forced at five years old to be a chimney sweep, harrowing to think of. (FFF) My Great-grandmother (FMM) and Great- Grandfather (FMF) were raised in an orphanage in Scotland and as soon as Jane was able to at 14 they ran away to get married. They had eleven children and she delivered every baby in the village, she was 4ft 10 and Bam was 6ft 5! 😄 I didn't know about her until I died and was revived with illness and surgery due to pre-eclampsia and thought I saw my Gran holding my baby, I thought she had passed and no one had told me because of the blood pressure dangers. When I told her about it later she went to her bedroom and came back with a photo "Is this the lady you saw? It doesn't surprise me..." and told me her story. My Great-grandmother feisty Irish lass who came over during the Irish Holocaust(FFM). She had a hellish life my Great- Grandfather (FFF) died at 27 after a pit fall when Grandad was only two. She was also the local midwife and a phenomenal Herbalist had three husbands and the first was very violent, he died when he🤔...was😮...erm😯...young😲...too 😳. Noooooooo she wouldn't 🤨 would she 😬?
Biggest revelation for me was finding out I'm related to Danny dyer due to also being a descendent of William the conqueror. Only found this out because my father traced our family back and beyond William. Also an alarming amount of French royalty 😂
I'm related to Danny Dyer as well, although a bit closer. My direct ancestor is Henry Seymour, brother to Jane Seymour who became Henry VIII's wife. Danny's direct line comes from their sister, Elizabeth.
Once there is a royal connection it goes way back. Why do they often stop at Edward 1? Mathew Pinsent and Josh Widdecombe and Danny Dyer arent the only ones related to royalty.. there have been dozens of them, and some where the royal part was not even explored, like Clare Balding who has Earls and Dukes all over, and more going further back but it was barely mentioned at all.. The program only shows us a tiny part of a couple of lines. We are ALL descended from Charlemagne pretty much. We all have royal roots somewhere in the line. If we were to go back to the time of Charlemagne, we would find we had the potential for 281 trillion ancestors all living at that one moment in history. But this is statistically impossible! The world’s population at that time does not support these numbers. Everyone who has ever left offspring is in the pool and we all share ancestry with a lot of those people. If you dig away at all your ancestry lines you will soon discover how we are all related. Do you know all your 7th cousins? Some of them are probably neighbours or work colleagues and you never knew it
I started doing family research last January and discovered 3 interesting things. First, my paternal great grandfather, who my dad and I are supposed to get our surname from, we might not actually be related to. I discovered my grandads birth certificate and it had no father listed as he was illegitimate. I did find out that my supposed great grandmother and my real great grandmother were actually related and my supposed great grandmother was with my actual great grandmother when my great uncle was born. We think my grandad was adopted by my supposed great-grandfather and changed his name when he married my grandmother as it says on their marriage certificate, on his name it has his mother surname name and beside it "Known As" with my supposed great-grandfathers surname, and that is how we got the surname. I suspect my supposed great grandmother and actual great grandmother were sisters or close cousins but finding any birth or marriage certificates for them has been very tricky so far and I have yet to find them to find who their family actually is but I have a few DNA matches on Ancestry to people with the same surname. In 1875, 3 years after the birth of his 5th and last child, my maternal x3 great-grandfather ran away from home and my x3 great-grandmother put out a missing notice in several newspapers. He was found week or two later living over 30 miles away, where he stayed for the remaining years of his life and died in 1891. The strange co-incidence is, his great-grandson, my maternal grandfather (who was born close to where my x3 great-grandfather ran away from and who has the same name as him), married my grandmother who was born in the same area my x3 great-grandfather ran away to! My maternal 1st cousin x3 removed, in the 1930s, he and his brother lived on their family farm. One brother was wanting to get married, so they agreed to sell the farm and split th money between both of them. However the brother who wasn't getting married, decided he wanted all the money for himself and one day took a shotgun and shot at his bother, who ran away and then ran to the local police barracks to get help. The police came and found the brother in the attic with two shotguns and a lot of cartridges nearby. It went to court and it turned out the brother who fired at the other brother only fired empty cartridges to "scare" his brother as a joke for some reason and never meant to hurt him. Geez.
Loads of Brits are descendents of ten medieval kings. Becauee it s so many generations ago. My husband did some genealogical research and found he was descended from the medieval king of Jerusalem as well as Richard the 3 rd!
Can you explain further? Since Richard lll had no surviving children that are traceable (he may have had bastards unknown to history). Do you mean a collateral descent?
My grandfather fought in WWI and was diagnosed with Shell Shock. My dad fought in WWII, had Combat Fatigue, and was a very quiet, detached man. A beloved cousin fought in Viet Nam, had Post Viet Nam Syndrome, had violent flashbacks and finally committed suicide. A much younger cousin fought in the Gulf War, had Gulf War Syndrome, was finally granted a therapy dog, but was very quiet and detached. I have several friends whose sons fought in Iran and Iraq and have PTSD. It doesn’t, quite, carry the stigma my male relatives endured, but it’s still a heavy weight and a societally negative mark on lives so impacted by the brutalities of war. My heart weeps.
Considering a generation is 25 years, it’s not so weird or amazing you find kings or thieves in you history if you go back 300-400 years. By that point you have 1000’s and 1000’s of ancestors. It is literally just a matter of whether the sources are there or not, not that it is a surprise. I find the stories about grand-parents and great grand-parents more interesting than going through 15 generations till you dig up someone who has a portrait hanging in some palace…
I think 300-400 years in the past is still just a bit more unique for having a royal ancestor however pretty much everyone in western Europe is descended from royalty if you go back far enough.
I found out I have an 8th Great grand father who was sent to Hobart as a convict in 1803 and his nephew was sent to Perth as a convict in 1853. Also found out a 14th Great grand father is a dude called Sir James Croft who was “in charge” of Ireland in the 1500’s for a while and who had a connection to Elizabeth I.
We did our family on three lines. We are a mix of nobility and royalty on all branches. It gets better though. It was only when my grandma was born that we lost the money as all the money was spent putting her eldest sister through private school. Feeling guilty that her other sisters did have the same opportunity my great aunt put her children and encouraged her grand children through the same schools as the rest of the next generation. On my mums dads side we descend from landowners and directly from William the conqueror, and my cousin on her side through her dad descends from the tudors.
My mom was able to trace my dad's Scottish Ancestor way back. Turns out that he wasn't even Scottish but A Norman who fought with William the Conquer. She wasn't able to find much more than that but hey it is something cool. I mean my dad has Scotish roots from other people but that was the one that stood out
From watching the Scotland History Tours channel here on TH-cam, I found out there's a lot of that going on in Scottish history - some of the well-known Scottish clan surnames (like Sinclair) are actually Norman. Bruce Fumey of the channel, who himself is part Ghanaian (if I remember correctly; he did a DNA test a while ago and had some surprises of his own), has a whole series about all the people historically who put together what we now think of as Scotland, and quite often points out that the history is more complicated than you might think, it's pretty great.
@@beth12svist Oh what you can find in your DNA. Also my mom was able to find the name of my dad's Norman Ancestor and it sounded very much like what that name is today just a slight spelling change.
My 5th Great-Grandmother was Mary Bateman, known as the Yorkshire Witch. She poisoned people (up to 6 died), and was hanged in 1809. My 10th Great-Grandfather was James IV of Scotland.
The links to the Plantagenets aren’t that shocking. Given that around half of the English population died during the Black Death to a total of 2 million and the amount of children both legitimate and illegitimate had by people in those days there’s a high likelihood of you being of royal blood. If I remember correctly the odds are about 1 in 200 if you are directly English descendant.
In doing my son-in-laws genealogy I discovered that, through marriage, he is related to William the Conqueror and back to Charlemagne. If you do historic investigation, you can go back to the ancient Norse. It's amazing where you can go with just one marriage.
Investigating your family tree is an exciting task! However, you can also sometimes uncover insane things about your ancestors that are better left to the unknown. Case in point, I uncovered all kinds of scandals amongst my ancestors and more closely-related relatives that shocked me! It's a great hobby, though, and it's fascinating to learn about the good, bad, and the ugly about our ancestors. Everyone has scandalous ancestors within their trees, so it's not all that rare. Thanks, for sharing this video!
One of my favourite discoveries was reading the court records of my third-great-grandfather's bigamous marriage to my third-great-grandmother. I'm willing to bet we all have a king in our ancestry...and a murderer (not necessarily the same person)
The closest I have to a discovery like that is finding out on 23andMe last year that I’m apparently related to Otzi the Iceman. The oldest frozen body ever discovered, died around 5,300 years ago in the Italian alps.
My three times great grandfather was born into some kind of indentured servitude (not sure if slavery is the correct word to describe it, but it basically was) in a small rural settlement in South Africa. He travelled to Cape Town when he became an adult. We didn't realise this until we found actual written documents about him.
Dyer saying he "can't be" actually bought tears to my eyes, as a common geezer I can see he is simply trying to reason with his identity as a man who has come from the bottom. And it got me I can't lie.
my grandfather found out my maternal great-grandmother (the mother of my mother's mother) was raised in a jewish family and had jewish parents, and because by jewish tradition the label of being a jew goes through matrilineal descent. but when i started to embrace jewish tradition, my mother tried to recant it. tried to tell me that i wasn't a jew, despite already conversing with a rabbi who confirmed i am a jew by traditional standards. which i thought was weird because she is very much in favour of our family celebrating our orkadian heritage, despite that being much further along in our heritage than the jewish identity. so it's weird.
@@MsKaz1000 She didn't find out about her maternal grandmother's Jewish enthnicity until she had passed and my mother was in her fifties. In fact, it was my maternal grandfather (her dad) that discovered this when he was looking into my grandmother's family history. And like, yeah it would make more sense if she found out about it vefore she had me but I was 15 when it came out about that me, her and my brotyer are technically ethnic Jews. You don't have to be religious to be a Jew, I am talking solely on ethnic identity. I, for one, am agnostic but I do believe in some supernatural stuff but I would still consider myself a Jew with the familliaral connection and also from the comfort I get from the Jewish communities I am in.
I went deep into the family tree to discover I’m related to the royal Scottish line 4 or so generations before Mary queen of Scots. One of my ancestors also claimed to be descended from Odin, does that make me a Demi god?
My brother was doing our family tree in the late ‘90s. He said that we had an ancestor Hannah Hannaford who was a nanny of the future Richard 111. Apparently Henry 11 had his way with her and a child was produced. How do I prove this…I can’t. Good story though. I feel an affinity with the Plantagenets….
If there is still a direct paternal line from that child (given that it was a boy,) you could test against other known (or thought to be) decendants... but I think it was during genetic research into the genealogy of Richard the 3rd to check if he might indeed be Richard the 3rd, that they came across some paternal mismatch among some of the supposed decendants... so, I don't know if the show have some genetic reasons to claim someone decended some historical figure, because sometimes maybe not all was according to the books... at least not when paternity is concerned. Probably much easier to follow the female line, although not ironclad, that either, I guess...
my grandfather on my mothers side of the family was a bigamist and we have traced my late husbands family back to 1370 one decendent emigrated to America and has a town named after him.
I did some digging into my family tree. Not as exciting as Danny being a direct descendant of royalty, (I'm very very very very very distantly related to King Charles) but I fairly recently found out (only found out B like 3 days ago) that A) my 3rd great grandpa's sister-in-law is Hugh Grant's great-great aunt and B) my 3rd cousin was Baron Donaldson of Lymington and his wife the first female Lord Mayor of London (and until 2013 the only one) I know my great grandpa fought in the Somme, was a South African delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations in the mid 1940s, and was Administrator of Natal Province (now KwaZulu-Natal) 1948-1958 and was appointed a Knight of the Order of St John in 1959 by (then) Queen Elizabeth (who's coronation he had been to - ie in Westminster Abbey - 7 years earlier) His grandpa (my 3rd great grandpa) annexed the Transvaal, starting the first Boer War, and somehow the 4th Earl of Carnarvon (father of the 5th Earl who financially backed the search for Tutankhamun's tomb, and grandfather of both of the wives of the author Evelyn Waugh who wrote Brideshead Revisited) was involved. And my great uncle (same family line, but my grandma's sister's husband) worked at the Mayo Clinic and worked closely with Chris Barnard (who did the world's first heart transplant) doing research on open heart surgery and was very involved in the development of the first artificial heart valves I'm sure there's more cooler stuff to be found
One of my maternal lines goes back to both Swift and Dryden. I find it ironic that my poetry is worse than execrable. More like Ginsberg’s Howl. And my paternal ancestors include a Hessian deserter who was of Swiss ancestry, a Breton stonemason who moved to Guernsey to build the church in St Peter Port, and a legendary countess supposedly from the wrong side of the Lord Protector’s blanket. Oh, and my grandfather’s brother’s second wife was also married twice; firstly to the twice great grandfather of actor Jason Ritter, and secondly to my second great uncle. (I got this bit from my father, who told me that we were connected somehow to cowboy singer Tex Ritter. It took me thirty years to verify the statement.)
John Hurt. Jeremy Clarkson. Do a top ten of villains uncovered on, Who Do You Think You Are. There's two to start you off with. Clarksons is particularly telling.
Late in life, I learned I am directly descended from Milledge L. Bonham, who started the Civil War! He signed the first Secessionist Paper for South Carolina, where he was Governor.
Always good to know I may have genealogical ties to Danny Dyer... 😂 On my Dad's side, I've been told that we can trace back to the Seymour family. "Told" is the operative word, never seen the evidence, and it's my less than modest Grandma's story.
My sister went through Ancestry website and discovered our family is connected to dutch royalty in the 15th century. There is an extensive list of people today with the last name Van Leeuwen in Holland, and back in the day, families were very big. Perhaps I am also related to VanLeeuwenHoek (a double barrow name), the inventor of the microscope, but I cannot confirm that, but the spelling is the same. However, my sister did trace the dutch royalty connection. There are no famous people in our current family line today though, so there you go. However, if you translate Leeuwen from dutch to english, it means Lion, so dutch royalty connection may fit (many, many, many times descendent).
Danny, my new distsnt cousin- is my favorite. His reactions were my reactions. I've been known to yell out " No way!" Many times as I was doing my search.
I'm still trying to learn more about my ancestors, especially as my late mother's side has a few mysteries (and I'm sure my 2nd great grandmother was the result of an affair). I always get so excited to learn about other family trees, and Boris Johnson's story caught me off guard. I even told a friend who used to work in Politics, and he couldn't believe it either XD
I am also a descendant of Mary Boleyn and Edward Longshanks (twice). People always tell me there's no possible way that Mary's children were fathered by Henry VIII but as people can see there is a possibility 😉 Nice to see a cousin on the show though!
Hello cousin. I am descent of John Stewart, prior of coldingham. He was the bastard or illegitimate son of King James V and his mistress Elizabeth Carmichael
My great grandfathers were the Plantagenet and Angevin kings. Also, Queen Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, queens of England, Germany, Bohemia, etc. We also descend from the very first De Veres and other ancient English family lines, 5 signers of the Magna Carta including King John, Knights Templars, Knight William Marshal, etc. My favorite is my 14th G grandfather William Tyndale, who translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into English. My cousin Jeremy Taylor was chaplain to King Charles I of England. I guess we got lucky!😊
My dad and I traced our ancestors from the father side. We’re related to local governor and later his ancestors gambled a large portion of our wealth away (lands and properties).
Both my maternal side the Castilleja’s and my paternal side the Lujan’s came to America by way of Mexico however both sides originated in Spain. I went as far back as the 1400’s and found we came from nobles. My dads side sailed with Columbus and my moms side came during the conquest. They both left for New Spain which is current day Mexico. There’s towns in Spain my family is named after. Hernan Cortez was supposedly originally buried in Castilleja De La Cuesta before he was moved. And on my dads side a it’s been long rumored that a Luján buried Columbus in Seville Spain.
I did my own DNA and found I am related to MANY Kings throughout history, including the ancestors of Danny Dyer and also King James, House of Stuart. I am also related to Shakespeare !!! I even have ancestral connections to the House of Windsor... haha... From what I can see, I think most Kings in the past were all related at some point in time... I have ancestral royal roots in Sweden, Italy, England, Scotland, Norway, Ireland, France and Spain !!! Its crazy ! But so fascinating to me... what is funny is I have a degree in Literature and Writing and I really disliked Shakespeare during my school years ......haha.....
The Most Shocking Revelations on Long Lost Family
th-cam.com/video/IO3oilE29cQ/w-d-xo.html
The Danny Dyer episode was the best ever in my opinion. He met an aristocratic cousin and until the English Civil War, both families were equal but after the conflict Dyers family fell so low, descendents ended up in the workhouse.
Worse still, some ended up on Love Island.
@@babablacksheepdog That’s just tragic, I hope my future son or daughter never ends up on that shit show
@@babablacksheepdog oiled and served
Yes I totally agree! Second to that is Boris Johnson!
Geezers got a moat!
The Patrick Stewart discovery of his father's PTSD is heartbreaking. There was very little understanding of shellshock in those days and many people who fought for their country bore this horrible condition for the rest of their lives. Very sad.
At least he was left with some insight into WHY his father was so angry. It makes sense. When I found out how my father was treated as a child (as an adult) I came to realize where the inspiration came from. It allows me to understand, and to hurt less.
My grandfather fought in the Rif war and a few years after, was called for WW2, and from what my mother and her siblings said about him, he most likely suffered from some kind of PTSD. A constantly angry and bitter man, who couldn't stand anyone not doing as he says and stepping out of line. Apparently not really violent, but not a fun person.
We recently learned that he ended up killing himself in the 60s, which made things even worse when the traumatized super catholic stay at home mom suddenly has to take car of four kids and the fear of what people might think of this terrible sin...
@@lincliff663 Absolutely, the consequences of the war are still felt here. My town (Dunkirk) was pretty much flattened after the war, and only a few old buildings remained. They kept all the bullet impacts on the church. They reconstructed it in a very modernist fashion that hasn't aged well. But for my familiy, it resulted in odd behaviours in my mom and her siblings, things that shouldn't be very important became primordial and could lead to extreme meltdowns and fear.
On the other side of my family, it was quite different, but still very impactful. My grandmother was austrian during the Anschluss, and we recently found out the NSDAP asked my family there to release a document proving they didn't have jewish ancestry for five generations...who knows what happened to those who had some jewish ancestor.
Sorry Patrick Stewart I can’t stop thinking about his time as the Emperor of Tamriel
This program was a revelation to me. As I sat and watched it it was like a jigsaw piecing together in front of my eyes. For the first time I saw my own father in context. I just sat and cried.
We owe so much to that generation who sacrificed themselves, in every way and mostly because of the propaganda of the day. Those in power pushing for war. Unfortunately we have all been a victim of this in the last three years. This time we are fighting for freedom from the oppressors who are within our own government, who still think propaganda works.
took a dna test to surprise my father with our Italian family tree. turns out i wasnt Italian so before i told him, i bought my father a test... just to make sure we are still related ;) turns out he wasnt Italian either! on to his brothers..... Oh No Grandma what did you do ;) turns out my grandmother had a couple of affairs. her oldest boy was from her husband, second was from an unknown man (my uncle doesnt want to know who) and my father's biological father was the landlord who lived upstairs! great episode!
I guess it was hard for her to pay the rent...
I'm half northern Italian and my dna on that side is about 20 percent Italian and the rest Germanic European..Lots of invading went on and in my case Frederick Barbarossa went ham on my ancestors town.😁
I know several Italian immigrants that were sterile and their wives became pregnant and the mwn dealt with it so they would have a child. No invitro back then
How do they know if they aren't taking dna from ancestors...did you get da from the landlord
@@saracarson8835 It can also come from the relatives of the landlord without having the landlord to submit his own DNA. I feel so sorry for the grandpa thinking his wife is faithful and monogamous but turns out she isn't faithful at all. This why paternity testing needs to be done at all hospitals within all countries before being able to sign the birth certificate, so as women won't be able to commit paternity fraud and making a man pay for children that is not his biological without any say like how the posters grandma did if paternity testing was done before signing the birth certificate.
Not only is paternity fraud not healthy psychology when people find out the truth but it's also not good medically since many diseases and disorders are through genetics. It's very selfish whenever any woman commits paternity fraud and should be held accountable for committing fraud in the first place.
I think my favourite of all 'shocks' was Patsy Kensit.
Having found an ancestor who was a clergyman, she went to his old church and then asked "so was he buried in the grounds?" as in the cemetery outside.
The answer was "sort of, yes but he's not buried outside", it's then revealed that she's been stood on top of his grave!!
I had a college professor who told us that every English person could trace their family back to royalty. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels true every time I watch the British version of Who Do You Think You Are
its Charlemagne isnt it???? lol, he was the most virile man of his day!
YES THANK YOU FOR CONFIRMING THIS 4 ME
@@auntyeat1746 it’s supposed to be 25% of English people, FAR from “all”.
Or “every”.
@@auntyeat1746 he wasn’t “virile”, he was a horn dog who likely never spent two nights in one bed.
As a Marine with PTSD who’s father also suffered as a WWII veteran, I feel for Sir Patrick. To quote General Lee, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
Judi Dench's story was the coolest. Like, what a coincidence!
Why care about the illegitimate behavior of kings. Fifteen times removed etc. It was Lady Judi Dench ancestry that explains her Shakespearean link. LOVE it!
Really feel for Patrick Stewart. The same happened in my family. Shellshock, alcoholism, anger, and it is still affecting my family today.
Do actors care?
@@therespectedlex9794 ...they obviously care about their own family
@@hannahrobin7449 Not particularly, I imagine.
@@therespectedlex9794 disgusting comment
@@bradpearce3407Look who's talking.
Found out my "cousin" is really my half sister and I have 2 more siblings in my mother's country of birth that she abandoned before moving away and never spoke of. Ancestry DNA told all her secrets! Not "all" really, I'm sure I'll find out she was born a dolphin or something if I keep looking 😩
Your comment made me think of Jack Nicholson who found out in a press junket that his “sister” was his mother. She was very young when she fell pregnant so to avoid shame due to the era, his grandmother raised him. A random journalist found it out but presumed Jack knew. Unfortunately both were dead by the time he learned it.
Families are “funny” things…my wife’s great-great grandfather from Oslo literally (and I literary mean literally) had 2 families on different sides of the street and on the same block! She discovered this through public records after she started getting DNA results for people she didn’t have in her family records. And as best she can tell, they were not aware of one another. She’s connected with the “other” family members and they hadn’t heard of her family.
Cheer up .... i'm in my late 50s - a girl I had a crush on when I was in high school told me to get lost after one date.... about 3 years ago she contacts me and tells me she has done some digging and found we are related.... imagine if it had worked out between us all those years ago..... we would have had to move to The South........
That's common. Such children around my part of the world are referred to as "her aunt had she".
@@thelostone6981 WOW ! Gramps was a PLAYA !
"Boris is related to the bad King George"
...
Welp. That explains a lot.
Mad King George not bad 😂
Ignore the comment in the video about a song from "Horrible Histories" Don't believe anything on "Horrible Histories". They get more history wrong than they get right.
History is always written by the winners as they say @@tonyscupham-bilton7523
In researching my family, I found that my second great grandmother (1) had divorced twice in the turn of the last century, (2) tried to run with her daughters to Canada when she lost custody of them to her first ex, (3) IMO bribed that ex to gain custody of both her daughters and her sons, (4) ran a barbershop across the street from the Chicago stockyards, (5) after divorce #2, moved to Montana’s gold mining country to first be a single woman homesteader and then run a restaurant while husband #3 ran a hotel, (6) moved with new hubs to Oklahoma where they became full-time Spiritualists-he was a “divine healer” while she was a trance medium ($1/reading) and pastor of a Spiritualist church operated out of their home. She was arrested for illegal fortune telling in 1920 and her unsuccessful appeal, on the grounds of infringement of her First Amendment right to freedom of religion, was reported across the country. I’m finishing researching her life now in preparation to write a book.
I would read that book for sure
what a colourful life..
@@travelerforever8849 I know! And researching her kept adding levels of “She did WHAT?” First, I was intrigued by all of her last names on the genealogy website. Then I found a 1925 Oklahoma City directory entry for her and her third husband that seemed to give him the job of Minister, and I wondered how what I assumed was a conservative Christian pastor (given OK’s current status of being a very conservative state) explained having a wife with two ex-husbands walking around in 1925. Only later did I find the newspaper death notice that said that she was the pastor, not him, and it was a spiritualist church, which just blew my mind!
I tried to research the church, found nothing, and went to my go-to source of the local library’s website. A local history librarian in OKC was amazing and sent me an entire folder of documents, maps, and newspaper articles that she found in a few hours online.
I inherited from my grandmother some photos of her and her children, as well as a postcard she sent her youngest son (my great-grandfather) and her business card as a barber in 1899-1900 Chicago. Through that genealogy website, I connected with another of her great great granddaughters L and she had even more photos as well as access to family letters that she wrote or was mentioned in.
L and I are still trying to pin down info on her second and third husbands. I have someone checking Chicago court records for her second divorce, since we have been unable to find that marriage record in either Michigan (where she was from originally) or Chicago. If we strike out there, I’ll try Montana divorce records in case she delayed filing until she moved across country. Otherwise, I might have to presume she never officially married husband #2!
Husband #3 appears out of nowhere in 1906 Washington state owning a restaurant, then In Billings, MT in 1909 owning a lunch counter before becoming my ancestor’s farmhand in 1910 and marrying her in 1911. He has plenty of personal info on that marriage certificate, but none of it has produced any documentation of him anywhere. I suspect him of using a false name because of that utter failure to find him or his parents in any census records before 1910. Maybe he was a conman seeing a vulnerable older woman (she was 15 years older than him) with a fascination for Spiritualism he could exploit? I just don’t know.
Your great-grandmother was quite the lady! She proves we come from sturdy, creative stock!!
When I think of the courage and sheer NERVE it would take to grab your children and book passage on a leaky wooden boat across the Atlantic to America, where everyone -- no matter your age or gender -- was expected to literally build a new life for themselves...
And that was only the beginning!
Someday, our many-great grandchildren will be boarding an exploratory flight from Earth to Alpha Centauri, and our many-great grandparents, wherever they are, will wipe away a tear and smile as they watch their descendants head off into deep space.
Our species was born under a wandering star. We are the voyagers of the rafts, boats and starships of Earth, and our eternal mission is to bravely seek new worlds, new life and new civilizations. As we have always done, we boldly go where no one has gone before.
Literally sounds like such bullshit, whish is why so brilliant I can't wait to read this book this woman did everything it seems 🤣 incredible what you find out researching I very much would love to read this
My most exciting discovery was my 4th great grandfather who was captured by some Mohawk that took him to Canada and sold him to the British. He was taken at the raid on Royalton Vermont and his story is published on the internet if you search for the raid and the name George Avery. Another account was written for Zadock P Steele.
Wonderful reveal! Family history is fantastic to research. Your family members will appreciate your search for ancestors
So interesting , sounds like a great man. Respect
I've been researching my family tree for over 40 years, and I still get surprised by what I find. One of the first things I discovered was that my father was related to Charles Darwin. Then I found my mother was descended from King Edward III. In the last 5 years I've discovered that my mother has several step- and half- siblings (not sure how many, we're still finding them - 5 at the last count). Her grandfather's cousin was knighted for services to the law profession in India. One of her own cousins became a singer in the US and had his own radio show in the 1930s. I wonder if any of my family's descendants will be surprised by what the find out about us.
I’ve researched my family tree sporadically over the last two decades. My most surprising find was last summer when I followed a line on my mother’s side going directly back to King Charlemagne’s brother.
I discovered my ancestors was one of the few POW imprisoned after the Battle of Dunbar that survived his imprisonment. He was transported on the Unity in 1650 and was sold into service at a the Saugus Mass ironworks. He gained his freedom, married and made a good life for himself.
2:26 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition 😂 2:26
Yeah, in 2012 I found out I had another aunt. My grandmother had a half-sister none of us knew about. I've met her since then, she's lovely.
It annoyed me when they didn't air Christopher Eccleston, because his family "weren't exciting enough".
There are loads of them
And it's more not exciting enough for the public
Same for David Attenborough.
@Nicky L 🤦🏻♂️
They just didn't look at enough people. 9 generation, and you have 1000s of ancestors. You'll find murder victims, rape victims, war dead, tortured, and enslaved ancestors, gamblers, whores, kings, prisonniers, crooks, drunks, and a whole lot of decent hard working people. I know bc I found over 800 men and women from 1675 and earlier of my own ancestors.
So Boris is related to King George the 2nd. So he's likely related to mad King George 3rd as well . This makes sense.
He's definitely related George III would be his great uncle many times removed.
….. immigrants, so will he get deported to Rwanda?
George wasn't mad. It's now widely accepted by many in the medical community that it is highly likely he suffered with bipolar. This was covered in a recent episode of Lucy Worsley Investigates.
@@tomboychick yes. I heard.
Porphyria not bipolar
Holy crap, the Bojo family photos prove incontrovertibly that he is one of those Village of the Damned kids.
I researched my family tree.. Richard Shakespeare is my 13th great grandfather... he is also William Shakespeare's grandfather.. William is my 1st cousin 13 times removed.
I traced my ancestry back to royalty and found out I am related to Princess Leiea from Star Wars.
You do know that Star Wars is it a real thing and that is all made up right so how the Earth can you be related to a princess from bloody Star Wars you can’t be because it’s not a real character princess Leia isn’t a real character she’s a character has only exists in Star Wars please enlighten me God I’m still trying to work out how you on earth can you be related to a character that’s not real
@@danniellis7327 you clearly missed the sarcasm and joke.
Whooww... SO AM I😂😂😂
That also means you are related to Darth Vader and Luke! Have you inherited an affinity for the force?
That would be a back to the future glitch. Don't forget about (apparently) Uncle Luke & Gramp Vader.
Alan Cummings’ story was absolutely amazing!
My Mum got into researching her family tree about 10 years ago. Not a day would go by without her calling to let me know which famous person was apparently related to us. Notable highlights include Charlie Chaplin, Nelson Mandela, Ned Kelly, Vivian Leigh, Hans Christian Anderson, Benny Hill and Elvis. I guess the further back you go, and provided you go to the very ends of every branch and twig on the tree, we are all related to everyone.
Odd that we could be related to almost every major painter, author and movie star, but there was no mention of Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or other notable monsters. Funny how that works.
It's for that reason I appreciate that WDYTYA take a pretty direct path with their research- not too many sidesteps or (in my Mum's case) wild leaps in random directions. Got to say the producers are missing a trick: Eva Peron AND Monet?- my episode would be epic.
Funny you say that ... everyone doing a past life regression was always royalty, etc in a former life, never a slave or a peasant.
I sadly discovered one of my Gt. Grannies was put in a Victorian Lunatic Asylum in Ireland and I am related to the late Cranberries singer, Delores O'Riordan, her grandmother was my fathers cousin. I met her grannie in the 70s.. sweet lady and I recall her showing me Delores photo when she was tiny and talking about the musicians in that side of the family I knew my Father had an uncle who played the Irish fiddle so not surprising.
from al accounts I think there is afair chance one uncle and my Welsh grandfather had a form of PTSD, both war inflicted - 2nd and 1st world wars respectively. My Grandfather was injured at the front in 1918 with shrapnal wounds to his stomoch. he bore them for the rest of his life ans my uncle witnessed many tings including the decapitation of his friend, i think in Italy. My uncle was a tank driver in the Dragoon Guards and witnessed the Padre, his good friend, traveling on top of the tank in front get decapitated y a boob trap piano wire which the Germans had put across the road. that mut have caused his after problems. Antoher was on the burmah Railway .say no moor War is diabolical.
Your lineage sounds like a box of liquorice allsorts lol
well, in the past there were less people on the planet, so it makes sense. They say everyone in Europe (and wherever Europeans went in history) are related to Charlemagne, for instance.
HE WAS THE BAD ONE 😂 that's one of the best references in a video ever! Well done sir well done
My Dad is from England and on this trip in March I spent time with my cousin, going over our family tree on my Granny’s side. We are related to Richard “Dick” Turpin. Not a royal but definitely interesting.
A highwayman? What fun!
I traced my roots and I am related to my dog, distantly, through the Werewolves of London gene lineage.
Guffawing so hard
We are actually related to dogs in that we share about 84% of our dna with them 😢 but it would be soo cool if we were even closer related.
@@nillyk5671 How close in DNA are we to cats? Dogs aren't my problem, but my cats act like demigods and it confuses me and my dog.
I had a genealogy test done and I am English and Welsh, it didn't mention Collie.
Cute. Puppy play must feel kind of nostalgic now.
The mindblowing fact for me is the thought of exponential growth when looking backwards over a family tree. We all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents. Just taking into account biological parents and doubling each generation it only takes 10 generations to have a family tree 1024 people wide. 20 generations is over 1 million ancestors. The truly mindblowing part is that in 30 generations it is over 1 billion people. If you take a generation as around 25 years that means 30 generations take about 750 years. And here is the kicker.... 750 years ago the worlds population was estimated at less than 400 million. Someone please help before my melon explodes.
I suppose that's the usefulness of a constantly migrating population and extreme famines and pandemics that kill 50% of a country or even a continent's population
It's called shared ancestry. As you go up your family tree a lot of "branches" will end up at the same people. The human race is essentially one big incest party!
For those who dont geddit. We are all cousins by birth AND all related to royalty. (Brits and Europeans.)
@@johnkean6852 spot on. I have extensively researched my family tree for years and almost all of us can link our tree up to royalty. The One World Tree was brilliant in enabling us to do this, but for some reason that no longer exists. So when people say they are descended from royalty they’re not unique they’d only be unique if they couldn’t.
@Just4fun 888 Oh My! She had both sides of the coin, didn't she.
I also know, that a few of my Scottish ancestors, were sent on a long sea voyage to Australia. I believe it’s called Penal Servitude. Their surname is Russell. Very popular name in Australia.
Here are some of mine Edward II is my 20th great-grandfather, Henry I is my 26th great-grandfather, Edward I is my 21st great-grandfather, Edward III is my 19th great-grandfather, Henry VIII is my 3rd cousin 15x removed, Catherine of Aragon is my 3rd cousin 16x removed, Anne Boleyn is my 1st cousin 15x removed, Jane Seymour is my 2nd cousin 15x removed, Katherine Howard is my 1st cousin 15x removed and Catherine Parr is my 1st cousin 14x removed.
Found out a few weeks ago that my uncle had a child he never knew about. She is 60 and there are only 7 cousins so we are so excited to have a new one! my uncle passed away last year so she never met him but he has an identical twin and she met him. My dad was the older brother of the twins
That’s lovely that you are happy about it! I’m the dirty little secret.
@@kathrynwitte3398Oh, I'm so sorry. Hope one day it will get better.
wow at least he got to know a twin of his fathers which is in itself amazing.
An honourable mention should go to Jeremy Clarkson and his unexpected connection to Paddington Bear
I don’t think it was too surprising for him to learn. I will admit it was interesting when I got told a good while ago.
He's aware of it though, so it's not shocking to him
Don't u mean poo bear 🤔
@@johnkean6852 Pooh bear is A A MILNE.
Note the h.
Different author
Though as far as I am concerned, Clarkson is a gobsh*te
I'm descended from Henry VII & Elizabeth of York via daughter Mary. I also discovered that my high school bestie, whose sister was my sister's middle school bestie, was our second cousin! Same great-grandparents! THAT blew my mind!
My Grandma was Catherine of York Elizabeth's Sister- the youngest girl. I was shocked when I found that out.
Hey cousin 😂😂 I am 13th great grandson of John Stewart, prior of coldingham. He was the illegitimate son of King James V of Scotland and his mistress Elizabeth Carmichael. This would make John the grandsons of King James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, the sister of King Henry VIII of England.
@@jturn103 So you're a descendant of Henry VII & Elizabeth as well but via Margaret and I'm via Mary. Is that right? (Sorry, brain surgery two weeks ago so... basic thinking is a challenge.)
Boris Johnson is descended from a bad king. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!
My Great-Grandmother (FFMM) was indigenous nomad, Ancestry originally from Jerusalem and alongside Templar/Cathar line, she smoked a pipe, which tickled me don't know what was in it! 😁
My surname is originally 'Moses' Tribe' we have been apparently discovered to be one of the lost tribes who also followed the Rose Line.
My Great-great grandfather was forced at five years old to be a chimney sweep, harrowing to think of. (FFF)
My Great-grandmother (FMM) and Great- Grandfather (FMF) were raised in an orphanage in Scotland and as soon as Jane was able to at 14 they ran away to get married. They had eleven children and she delivered every baby in the village, she was 4ft 10 and Bam was 6ft 5! 😄 I didn't know about her until I died and was revived with illness and surgery due to pre-eclampsia and thought I saw my Gran holding my baby, I thought she had passed and no one had told me because of the blood pressure dangers. When I told her about it later she went to her bedroom and came back with a photo "Is this the lady you saw? It doesn't surprise me..." and told me her story.
My Great-grandmother feisty Irish lass who came over during the Irish Holocaust(FFM). She had a hellish life my Great- Grandfather (FFF) died at 27 after a pit fall when Grandad was only two. She was also the local midwife and a phenomenal Herbalist had three husbands and the first was very violent, he died when he🤔...was😮...erm😯...young😲...too 😳. Noooooooo she wouldn't 🤨 would she 😬?
Biggest revelation for me was finding out I'm related to Danny dyer due to also being a descendent of William the conqueror. Only found this out because my father traced our family back and beyond William. Also an alarming amount of French royalty 😂
I'm related to Danny Dyer as well, although a bit closer. My direct ancestor is Henry Seymour, brother to Jane Seymour who became Henry VIII's wife. Danny's direct line comes from their sister, Elizabeth.
Sacre _bleu_ !!!
then you are also distantly related to Alexander Armstrong who discovered he is a descendent of William the Conqueror on this show too
Yup, I'm related to Normans...William The Conqueror and on back to Rollo The Viking.
If you go back to William the conqueror, you can go back to the first duke of Normandy… Rollo, the Viking!
German, Dutchman
William the conqueror is my 43rd GGF through Henry the 1st. I also have 2 saints in my lineage. So I have the going for me !
Yup, I'm related to Rollo, William The Conqueror...
Once there is a royal connection it goes way back. Why do they often stop at Edward 1? Mathew Pinsent and Josh Widdecombe and Danny Dyer arent the only ones related to royalty.. there have been dozens of them, and some where the royal part was not even explored, like Clare Balding who has Earls and Dukes all over, and more going further back but it was barely mentioned at all.. The program only shows us a tiny part of a couple of lines. We are ALL descended from Charlemagne pretty much. We all have royal roots somewhere in the line. If we were to go back to the time of Charlemagne, we would find we had the potential for 281 trillion ancestors all living at that one moment in history. But this is statistically impossible! The world’s population at that time does not support these numbers. Everyone who has ever left offspring is in the pool and we all share ancestry with a lot of those people. If you dig away at all your ancestry lines you will soon discover how we are all related. Do you know all your 7th cousins? Some of them are probably neighbours or work colleagues and you never knew it
I would've said that Boris Johnson is related to Matt Lucas! 😂😂😂😂
I started doing family research last January and discovered 3 interesting things. First, my paternal great grandfather, who my dad and I are supposed to get our surname from, we might not actually be related to. I discovered my grandads birth certificate and it had no father listed as he was illegitimate. I did find out that my supposed great grandmother and my real great grandmother were actually related and my supposed great grandmother was with my actual great grandmother when my great uncle was born. We think my grandad was adopted by my supposed great-grandfather and changed his name when he married my grandmother as it says on their marriage certificate, on his name it has his mother surname name and beside it "Known As" with my supposed great-grandfathers surname, and that is how we got the surname.
I suspect my supposed great grandmother and actual great grandmother were sisters or close cousins but finding any birth or marriage certificates for them has been very tricky so far and I have yet to find them to find who their family actually is but I have a few DNA matches on Ancestry to people with the same surname.
In 1875, 3 years after the birth of his 5th and last child, my maternal x3 great-grandfather ran away from home and my x3 great-grandmother put out a missing notice in several newspapers. He was found week or two later living over 30 miles away, where he stayed for the remaining years of his life and died in 1891. The strange co-incidence is, his great-grandson, my maternal grandfather (who was born close to where my x3 great-grandfather ran away from and who has the same name as him), married my grandmother who was born in the same area my x3 great-grandfather ran away to!
My maternal 1st cousin x3 removed, in the 1930s, he and his brother lived on their family farm. One brother was wanting to get married, so they agreed to sell the farm and split th money between both of them. However the brother who wasn't getting married, decided he wanted all the money for himself and one day took a shotgun and shot at his bother, who ran away and then ran to the local police barracks to get help. The police came and found the brother in the attic with two shotguns and a lot of cartridges nearby. It went to court and it turned out the brother who fired at the other brother only fired empty cartridges to "scare" his brother as a joke for some reason and never meant to hurt him. Geez.
We have a similar thing with my grand mother. She was a ‘twin’. But records show that she actually wasn’t, and it is very hard to find out the truth.
@@leannewith3 i found out that on my Grandmothers side i am distantly related to 2 U.S Presidents
I guess life has always been a soap opera.
Loads of Brits are descendents of ten medieval kings. Becauee it s so many generations ago. My husband did some genealogical research and found he was descended from the medieval king of Jerusalem as well as Richard the 3 rd!
Interesting. Where do you keep your Crown, Orb and Sceptre 🤔
Can you explain further? Since Richard lll had no surviving children that are traceable (he may have had bastards unknown to history). Do you mean a collateral descent?
Me too
My grandfather fought in WWI and was diagnosed with Shell Shock. My dad fought in WWII, had Combat Fatigue, and was a very quiet, detached man. A beloved cousin fought in Viet Nam, had Post Viet Nam Syndrome, had violent flashbacks and finally committed suicide. A much younger cousin fought in the Gulf War, had Gulf War Syndrome, was finally granted a therapy dog, but was very quiet and detached. I have several friends whose sons fought in Iran and Iraq and have PTSD. It doesn’t, quite, carry the stigma my male relatives endured, but it’s still a heavy weight and a societally negative mark on lives so impacted by the brutalities of war. My heart weeps.
Considering a generation is 25 years, it’s not so weird or amazing you find kings or thieves in you history if you go back 300-400 years. By that point you have 1000’s and 1000’s of ancestors. It is literally just a matter of whether the sources are there or not, not that it is a surprise.
I find the stories about grand-parents and great grand-parents more interesting than going through 15 generations till you dig up someone who has a portrait hanging in some palace…
I think 300-400 years in the past is still just a bit more unique for having a royal ancestor however pretty much everyone in western Europe is descended from royalty if you go back far enough.
i would like to know how many people are related to a king, cos i recon its allllooooot of people lol@@RaffieFaffie
@@Obvsaninternetexpert Yeah in Europe it's a lot of people
if this is updated then Matt Lucas discovering family connection with Anne Frank would surely be high on the list.
His Grandmothers cousin rented an apartment next to them, not related
@@mac4boys541 'connection' not relative and this list says 'revelations' not relationships
I found out I have an 8th Great grand father who was sent to Hobart as a convict in 1803 and his nephew was sent to Perth as a convict in 1853. Also found out a 14th Great grand father is a dude called Sir James Croft who was “in charge” of Ireland in the 1500’s for a while and who had a connection to Elizabeth I.
We did our family on three lines. We are a mix of nobility and royalty on all branches. It gets better though. It was only when my grandma was born that we lost the money as all the money was spent putting her eldest sister through private school. Feeling guilty that her other sisters did have the same opportunity my great aunt put her children and encouraged her grand children through the same schools as the rest of the next generation. On my mums dads side we descend from landowners and directly from William the conqueror, and my cousin on her side through her dad descends from the tudors.
The Welsh accent of the presenter is… something else.
The god/Jesus one is too funny 😭😭😭😭
Especially since Christ Lord is God who 'was before Abraham was born."
I’m related to Jane Austen which as I love creative writing was the best thing ever to find out
Aww, so lucky! I wish I was related to and had someone so noteworthy in my family! 😳🤭
My mom was able to trace my dad's Scottish Ancestor way back. Turns out that he wasn't even Scottish but A Norman who fought with William the Conquer. She wasn't able to find much more than that but hey it is something cool. I mean my dad has Scotish roots from other people but that was the one that stood out
From watching the Scotland History Tours channel here on TH-cam, I found out there's a lot of that going on in Scottish history - some of the well-known Scottish clan surnames (like Sinclair) are actually Norman. Bruce Fumey of the channel, who himself is part Ghanaian (if I remember correctly; he did a DNA test a while ago and had some surprises of his own), has a whole series about all the people historically who put together what we now think of as Scotland, and quite often points out that the history is more complicated than you might think, it's pretty great.
@@beth12svist Oh what you can find in your DNA. Also my mom was able to find the name of my dad's Norman Ancestor and it sounded very much like what that name is today just a slight spelling change.
Kim Cattrall 's episode was crazy.
My 5th Great-Grandmother was Mary Bateman, known as the Yorkshire Witch. She poisoned people (up to 6 died), and was hanged in 1809. My 10th Great-Grandfather was James IV of Scotland.
The links to the Plantagenets aren’t that shocking. Given that around half of the English population died during the Black Death to a total of 2 million and the amount of children both legitimate and illegitimate had by people in those days there’s a high likelihood of you being of royal blood. If I remember correctly the odds are about 1 in 200 if you are directly English descendant.
In doing my son-in-laws genealogy I discovered that, through marriage, he is related to William the Conqueror and back to Charlemagne. If you do historic investigation, you can go back to the ancient Norse. It's amazing where you can go with just one marriage.
Investigating your family tree is an exciting task! However, you can also sometimes uncover insane things about your ancestors that are better left to the unknown. Case in point, I uncovered all kinds of scandals amongst my ancestors and more closely-related relatives that shocked me! It's a great hobby, though, and it's fascinating to learn about the good, bad, and the ugly about our ancestors. Everyone has scandalous ancestors within their trees, so it's not all that rare. Thanks, for sharing this video!
One of my Grandpa's murdered his cousin so the cousins got together and murdered Grandpa! Thank goodness he had his kids before getting murdered!
@@maryfrump7937 Hi Mary, that's terrible!
One of my favourite discoveries was reading the court records of my third-great-grandfather's bigamous marriage to my third-great-grandmother. I'm willing to bet we all have a king in our ancestry...and a murderer (not necessarily the same person)
Alan's grandfather's story screamed cover up.
The closest I have to a discovery like that is finding out on 23andMe last year that I’m apparently related to Otzi the Iceman.
The oldest frozen body ever discovered, died around 5,300 years ago in the Italian alps.
That’s actually really flipping cool. Watch out for snowy weather, though
Jesus, I'm loving these comments !!!!!
My three times great grandfather was born into some kind of indentured servitude (not sure if slavery is the correct word to describe it, but it basically was) in a small rural settlement in South Africa. He travelled to Cape Town when he became an adult. We didn't realise this until we found actual written documents about him.
Very interesting vid,love WDYTYA,but you missed the biggest episode shock: Kim Cattrall's grandfather's bigamy from Season 6 !
I found out my Great-Great Grandfather was the High Sheriff of Wicklow and served in the Boer War. Burke’s Landed Gentry has all,our family listed..
Dyer saying he "can't be" actually bought tears to my eyes, as a common geezer I can see he is simply trying to reason with his identity as a man who has come from the bottom. And it got me I can't lie.
I was seeing those names and was so excited cause I knew what it meant
Freddie Mercury singing in Green Park
Love watching these videos👍
My mother's father, William Burke was a 3rd cousin to the actress Billie Burke,She played Glenda the good Witch in the Wizard of oz.
my grandfather found out my maternal great-grandmother (the mother of my mother's mother) was raised in a jewish family and had jewish parents, and because by jewish tradition the label of being a jew goes through matrilineal descent. but when i started to embrace jewish tradition, my mother tried to recant it. tried to tell me that i wasn't a jew, despite already conversing with a rabbi who confirmed i am a jew by traditional standards. which i thought was weird because she is very much in favour of our family celebrating our orkadian heritage, despite that being much further along in our heritage than the jewish identity. so it's weird.
It's not Jewish tradition. We go according to the mother and it is actually Talmudic law.
Orkadian as in the Orkney Islands. So the Scots in your family were Jews, and it was news.
maybe your mother does not want the weight of a religion she has never learnt passed on to her children
@@alizahalon Oh okay, that makes more sense. Thanks for telling me.
@@MsKaz1000 She didn't find out about her maternal grandmother's Jewish enthnicity until she had passed and my mother was in her fifties. In fact, it was my maternal grandfather (her dad) that discovered this when he was looking into my grandmother's family history. And like, yeah it would make more sense if she found out about it vefore she had me but I was 15 when it came out about that me, her and my brotyer are technically ethnic Jews. You don't have to be religious to be a Jew, I am talking solely on ethnic identity. I, for one, am agnostic but I do believe in some supernatural stuff but I would still consider myself a Jew with the familliaral connection and also from the comfort I get from the Jewish communities I am in.
Time to binge the hell out of this show
I went deep into the family tree to discover I’m related to the royal Scottish line 4 or so generations before Mary queen of Scots. One of my ancestors also claimed to be descended from Odin, does that make me a Demi god?
No a _Goddess_ dahling: flaunt what ya got whilst you have the chance 😁
We found out we had a relative who had a family here in America and a whole other family with another wife in England
smooth --- keep an Ocean between them .... 😂👍
My brother was doing our family tree in the late ‘90s. He said that we had an ancestor Hannah Hannaford who was a nanny of the future Richard 111. Apparently Henry 11 had his way with her and a child was produced. How do I prove this…I can’t. Good story though. I feel an affinity with the Plantagenets….
My brain hurts that that's how you wrote Richard the 3rd or Richard III
If there is still a direct paternal line from that child (given that it was a boy,) you could test against other known (or thought to be) decendants... but I think it was during genetic research into the genealogy of Richard the 3rd to check if he might indeed be Richard the 3rd, that they came across some paternal mismatch among some of the supposed decendants... so, I don't know if the show have some genetic reasons to claim someone decended some historical figure, because sometimes maybe not all was according to the books... at least not when paternity is concerned. Probably much easier to follow the female line, although not ironclad, that either, I guess...
my grandfather on my mothers side of the family was a bigamist and we have traced my late husbands family back to 1370 one decendent emigrated to America and has a town named after him.
Danny wanting to wear a ruff cracks me up 😂 not sure these are shocking revelations - more like unexpected very unexpected 😉
I did some digging into my family tree. Not as exciting as Danny being a direct descendant of royalty, (I'm very very very very very distantly related to King Charles) but I fairly recently found out (only found out B like 3 days ago) that
A) my 3rd great grandpa's sister-in-law is Hugh Grant's great-great aunt and
B) my 3rd cousin was Baron Donaldson of Lymington and his wife the first female Lord Mayor of London (and until 2013 the only one)
I know my great grandpa fought in the Somme, was a South African delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations in the mid 1940s, and was Administrator of Natal Province (now KwaZulu-Natal) 1948-1958 and was appointed a Knight of the Order of St John in 1959 by (then) Queen Elizabeth (who's coronation he had been to - ie in Westminster Abbey - 7 years earlier)
His grandpa (my 3rd great grandpa) annexed the Transvaal, starting the first Boer War, and somehow the 4th Earl of Carnarvon (father of the 5th Earl who financially backed the search for Tutankhamun's tomb, and grandfather of both of the wives of the author Evelyn Waugh who wrote Brideshead Revisited) was involved.
And my great uncle (same family line, but my grandma's sister's husband) worked at the Mayo Clinic and worked closely with Chris Barnard (who did the world's first heart transplant) doing research on open heart surgery and was very involved in the development of the first artificial heart valves
I'm sure there's more cooler stuff to be found
One of my maternal lines goes back to both Swift and Dryden. I find it ironic that my poetry is worse than execrable. More like Ginsberg’s Howl. And my paternal ancestors include a Hessian deserter who was of Swiss ancestry, a Breton stonemason who moved to Guernsey to build the church in St Peter Port, and a legendary countess supposedly from the wrong side of the Lord Protector’s blanket. Oh, and my grandfather’s brother’s second wife was also married twice; firstly to the twice great grandfather of actor Jason Ritter, and secondly to my second great uncle. (I got this bit from my father, who told me that we were connected somehow to cowboy singer Tex Ritter. It took me thirty years to verify the statement.)
John Hurt. Jeremy Clarkson. Do a top ten of villains uncovered on, Who Do You Think You Are. There's two to start you off with. Clarksons is particularly telling.
Late in life, I learned I am directly descended from Milledge L. Bonham, who started the Civil War! He signed the first Secessionist Paper for South Carolina, where he was Governor.
I did not need to see the blonde joker on this list, and neither was his posh ancestry shocking
Mary Boleyn was my 13th GGM as well
Always good to know I may have genealogical ties to Danny Dyer... 😂
On my Dad's side, I've been told that we can trace back to the Seymour family. "Told" is the operative word, never seen the evidence, and it's my less than modest Grandma's story.
Thomas Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, and the Howard Family are distant relatives of mine.
My sister went through Ancestry website and discovered our family is connected to dutch royalty in the 15th century. There is an extensive list of people today with the last name Van Leeuwen in Holland, and back in the day, families were very big. Perhaps I am also related to VanLeeuwenHoek (a double barrow name), the inventor of the microscope, but I cannot confirm that, but the spelling is the same. However, my sister did trace the dutch royalty connection. There are no famous people in our current family line today though, so there you go. However, if you translate Leeuwen from dutch to english, it means Lion, so dutch royalty connection may fit (many, many, many times descendent).
I could be wrong, but I think they have ice cream shops in NYC
I traced my maternal grandmother's mother's side clear back to 1052. We are also direct decendants of King Robert II of Scotland.
Danny, my new distsnt cousin- is my favorite. His reactions were my reactions. I've been known to yell out " No way!" Many times as I was doing my search.
I'm still trying to learn more about my ancestors, especially as my late mother's side has a few mysteries (and I'm sure my 2nd great grandmother was the result of an affair). I always get so excited to learn about other family trees, and Boris Johnson's story caught me off guard. I even told a friend who used to work in Politics, and he couldn't believe it either XD
I am also a descendant of Mary Boleyn and Edward Longshanks (twice). People always tell me there's no possible way that Mary's children were fathered by Henry VIII but as people can see there is a possibility 😉 Nice to see a cousin on the show though!
Hello cousin. I am descent of John Stewart, prior of coldingham. He was the bastard or illegitimate son of King James V and his mistress Elizabeth Carmichael
John was grandsons of King James IV and Margaret Tudor, the sister of King Henry VIII of England.
Found out years ago I'm directly descendant of the MacDonald clan of Scotland, a lot of whom were killed during the Glencoe massacre.
My great grandfathers were the Plantagenet and Angevin kings. Also, Queen Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, queens of England, Germany, Bohemia, etc. We also descend from the very first De Veres and other ancient English family lines, 5 signers of the Magna Carta including King John, Knights Templars, Knight William Marshal, etc. My favorite is my 14th G grandfather William Tyndale, who translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into English. My cousin Jeremy Taylor was chaplain to King Charles I of England. I guess we got lucky!😊
hysterical. the expressions on their faces. I don't doubt my expression was much the same when I found I was a direct descendant of The Great Pumpkin.
Enjoyed Josh Widdecombe reactoon 😂
If Boris Johnson is directly related to George II,it also means he is distantly related to George IV,and one can see some similarities there.
German
If you’re trying to imply he’s mad then you have the wrong king. You’d mean George III.
@@Hollows1997 No,I was implying that he is rather louche,which George IV certainly was.
@@carmenlottner297 I suppose either fit the character of Johnson.
@@Hollows1997 Exactly!
The best: Dany Dyer! lol
King Danny Dyer, i can see that
My dad and I traced our ancestors from the father side. We’re related to local governor and later his ancestors gambled a large portion of our wealth away (lands and properties).
When going back through our genealogy my father discovered that our great, great grandfather is Keith Richards.
Got alot of those in mine as well...
We really are all connected...
Little fun fact Mark Wright based on his ancestry can ask his Spanish Nationality without being a resident in Spain
Both my maternal side the Castilleja’s and my paternal side the Lujan’s came to America by way of Mexico however both sides originated in Spain. I went as far back as the 1400’s and found we came from nobles. My dads side sailed with Columbus and my moms side came during the conquest. They both left for New Spain which is current day Mexico. There’s towns in Spain my family is named after. Hernan Cortez was supposedly originally buried in Castilleja De La Cuesta before he was moved. And on my dads side a it’s been long rumored that a Luján buried Columbus in Seville Spain.
I did my own DNA and found I am related to MANY Kings throughout history, including the ancestors of Danny Dyer and also King James, House of Stuart. I am also related to Shakespeare !!! I even have ancestral connections to the House of Windsor... haha... From what I can see, I think most Kings in the past were all related at some point in time... I have ancestral royal roots in Sweden, Italy, England, Scotland, Norway, Ireland, France and Spain !!! Its crazy ! But so fascinating to me... what is funny is I have a degree in Literature and Writing and I really disliked Shakespeare during my school years ......haha.....
I'm working on trying to figure out if I'm infact related to the famous witch hunter as well