Yes, I realized I’d missed a couple of generations when I woke up.
My grandmother taught high school English back in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, and one of her students, Wilbert “Skeeter” McClure, won a gold medal in light middleweight boxing in the 1960 Olympics. When he got his big parade upon returning home, he came to my grandmother’s house to thank her for her encouragement. He brought an Olympic teammate he thought she might like to meet because McClure was sure he’d be famous someday: Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammed Ali. I was not born until ten years later.
There’s a guy who goes to my gym. We’ve become friendly over the past few years, and just talking with him is a brush with history.
He:
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was born in 1921 in Oklahoma
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came to California with his parents in the Depression
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served in the Pacific (mainly New Guinea) during WWII
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went to San Diego State, then worked for the County sheriff
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was a civil rights activist in San Diego in the 1960s, part of a group of blacks and Latinos who protested against restaurants that refused to serve people of color
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was the first black member of the San Diego City Council in the late 1960s and through the 1970s
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was the first (and, i think, still only ever) black member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors
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was vice-chair and then chair of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System in the 1990s and early 2000s. One of the city light rail stops, the one at SDSU, is dedicated to him.
He’s 94 now, and i still see him at the gym pretty regularly, walking the treadmill and lifting light weights. He’s absolutely fascinating to talk to.
I waited on Bo Diddley once when I worked at McDonalds.
One of my co-workers is a close relative of Tom Petty.
Sorry, that’s all I got. 
So, you know Diddley, eh?
Trust me, I don’t know squat!
Another one: a good friend and colleague of mine’s father was asked by the Hussein family to defend Saddam in his trial for mass murder. He eventually passed on it.
Thirdhand brush with fame: my doctoral advisor had an Erdös number of 2. So I’m within 3 degrees of separation from Pal Erdös.
(Too bad my advisor and I never co-wrote a paper, because then I’d have an Erdös number of 3. I guess you could stretch a point and say that my dissertation was a collaboration with my advisor, but it’s iffy.)
Once my dad and I were waiting for our car to be fixed at a service station in Pennsylvania, and Jack Palance walked in. At the time, I only knew him from an episode of the Buck Rogers TV show. (Hadn’t seen Shane yet.)
In descending order of seriousness:
My great-uncle was a survivor of the Bataan Death March (the treatment he received left him legally blind).
I shook hands with Senator John Warner of Virginia. At the time, he was married to Elizabeth Taylor. I’m sure he had recently washed his hands, but still…sometimes…the mind wanders…
I was one of several people at the table having dinner with John Hornsby (brother of Bruce, for those old enough) once; he made a joke about how, after having written “Mandolin Rain”, they were wondering how to follow that - “French Horn Cold Front”? Later, we all went to an Alex Chilton show (I was literally sitting about four feet in front of him; the venue wasn’t very big at all). Our group went backstage afterwards, and he offered me a gingerbread cookie off of a tray of them. That was, and remains, the vilest cookie I have ever tasted.
was going through some things from the attic, found my autographed copy of Bill Pearl’s book. Nice guy.
One that sort of counts is William McCool, the pilot of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the one that burned up over Texas on February 1, 2003, went to both my high school and my undergraduate university. But he was younger than I, and I never knew him.
My grandmother introduced me to Stanley Knowles, a major figure in Canadian politics in the last 2/3 of the recent century. He boarded with a friend of hers.
Well he went to my high school, but now I’m not sure about the undergrad university. His Wikipedia bio says he got his bachelor’s degree from the United States Naval Academy, and that sure was not my undergrad university. During one of the transmissions from space, he was seen wearing a T-shirt with my undergrad uni’s name on it, and that uni is close to the high school, so I assumed he went there. May have taken some courses.
My grandfather shook Adolf Hitler’s hand.
While I’ve met many celebrities at Broadway stage doors, the only one I walked down the street with was Christopher Reeve.
My late father-in-law was one of his college professors, but I don’t think that qualifies as a brush with history. Maybe one of those six degrees of separation dealie to Annie Xmas, though.
I lived in the same dorm (Risley) as Christopher Reeve at Cornell. I knew him casually. He didn’t look much like Superman then.
So, he could have been your professor, too! Another six degrees.