There are also a few more instances that I can think of. My dad worked with someone who was a survivor of the Bataan death march. My uncle also witnessed part of the flight 93 incident. My grandfather also might have been somewhat involved in the roswell incident. He was a part of the military and worked on stuff that is still classified.
My high school calculus teacher was good friends with Margaret Thatcher due to her days as Secretary of Eduction (UK equivalent at least). A year later my college professor/mentor, I found out, was being mailed holiday letters from both Li Peng (Chinese Premier) and Taiwan’s President. I figured that those combined with my chemistry TA being an Iraqi Hussein family member gave me 2 or 3 degrees of separation from every country leader in the world.
Having Pele over for dinner is probably cooler but doesn’t open as many other connections.
I delivered papers to him, he gave me a nice bottle of booze for Christmas. Nice guy.
I shook hands with JFK. I was very young.
I got a call from Scoop Jackson asking me to be on his list of delegates from CA.
I was attending a music and arts summer camp at Northwestern U in the summer of 1970. After an outing to some of the cultural hot spots in downtown Chicago, our group of campers was going to attend a free concert in the park by Sly and the Family Stone. It was July 28th. Fortunately, we were arriving late and were quite a ways from the bandshell when the rioting started, but we could hear screaming and shooting and saw the fires from the burning cars. The adults with our group quickly got us out of the park and into our buses, but we sat in the bus for quite a long time until we were allowed to leave, all the while watching the mayhem unfolding around us.
Close. It was July 27. Or you were really late for that concert. Here’s the story for those unfamiliar with it (like me.) ETA: Heh… I know one of the photographers who took the photos for that story in the linked-to July 28, 1970, edition of the Chicago Tribune.
Whoops! Well, in my defense, it WAS a few short years ago. 
I was working in the John Hancock Building that day, on the 93rd floor. We could see the Petrillo Bandshell in Grant Park from the windows. I saw that riot, too 
Got a couple of historical ones.
Many years ago, we had a cleaning lady for a couple of years when my wife and I both worked full-time. She was from Eastern Europe. In fact, she was born in Sarajevo, in the same area where Gavrilo Princip grew up. She never knew him (he died right about the time she was born) but she knew the family well.
Also when my wife did her family history, she discovered relatives who spent time on St Helena in the period 1816-1825. Mother was an indentured worker (almost a slave), father was one of the British Garrison. The mother worked for the British Governer. We are really trying to find out if she may have been…perhaps, a cook?
how could I have forgotten this one? bit of history: in 1964,Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering. I used to rent a house from the juror he was convicted of tampering with.
My Grandfather was on the Missouri, as a civilian interpreter. He filmed the ceremony (from a long way back I think). The film was later (several years later) confiscated by Japanese customs/imigration officials as he was leaving Japan.
My Dad was at Bikini Atoll (over the horizon). They steamed back after the explosion, to do whatever, and all the loose flakes of paint on the ships stood up like the gold leaves on a gold-leaf electroscope. So after a while they went away and waited a bit longer. That’s alpha particles, so probably unrelated that he died of cancer (my mother was not impressed though).
I don’t know if it was releated to that, but years later (in the 80’s or 90’s), he got a letter telling him that none of the projects he worked on were secret anymore, so he could do whatever he wanted.
I studied engineering under my dad, who studied engineering at MSU ?? under a man who had been taught by Fourier. If you aren’t an electrical engineer (6 munce ago I coudnt even spel that) that might not mean much to you, but it is kinda cool.
How the heck old are you, your dad, and the guy who taught him?
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier died in 1830. If your dad’s teacher was born in 1810, I could see him teaching your father if he was born sometime well before the end of the 19th century, but then you’d have to be born at the beginning of the 20th century.
I suspect you’re either missing a link (or more) in your chain of transmission, or you’ve got the wrong Fourier.
You dated Rhea Seddon?
My husband was sitting in a bar with a friend when a Jamaican guy came in and dove under their table, saying something to the effect of “don’t tell her I’m here.” A few minutes later a woman came in, looked around then left. Bob Marley popped up from under the table and thanked them, bought a few drinks for them and chatted for a bit.
When he was in high school he interviewed Pete O’Neal (leader of the KC chapter of the Black Panthers), who was polite and amused that a little white boy had the balls to do it.
My only brush with history is that I’m related to George Washington and Mary Todd Lincoln.
I belong to a local ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Shortly after I joined, I was looking up some of the other members online, just to see what kind of magic they did and how they promoted themselves. When I did a search for one member, who I knew was a ventriloquist, one of the first hits was to a site about the Kennedy Assassination. When I followed the link, it took me to the members testimony to the Warren Commission. It turns out he was the emcee at Jack Ruby’s nightclub during the time of the assassination.
I’m a distant cousin of Martin Van Buren.
Me, it’s Taft. Of all the Presidents to be related to…
(we both kinda have ‘winners’ there, eh?)
The woman who was a close friend of my grandfather’s and came by every Thursday when I was a kid to visit my mom and dad and make pierogi for us was a concentration camp survivor (I can’t remember which one, but I’d guess Auschwitz-Birkenau given where my grandfather is from), but I vividly remember the tattooed number on her arm. She was also the live-in caretaker here in Chicago for the legal adviser on patent rights to the Manhattan Project, which I guess was an interesting connection.
Malcolm X and a couple other members of the NOI spent the night at my paternal grandfather’s house. Before I was born.
No, older than her.
Closer, but no cigar.