Today I Learned (TIL)

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TIL: That the actor Tom Hanks is distant cousin of the 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln. Hanks also narrated a 2011 documentary about the former President, entitled Killing Lincoln. (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Almost all Anglo-Saxon Americans are "distant cousins" of Abraham Lincoln. It's just a matter of actually having enough genealogical records. He's my 5th cousin 9 times removed (Tom Hanks is Abraham Lincoln's 3rd cousin 4 times removed for reference). Martin Luther is also my 13th great grandfather. If you go far back enough you can find that most Europeans are direct descendants of the Habsburgs and Caesar etc.

Given the proper information/records, genealogy doesn't become a question of "are they related" but "how related are they". The ants in your back yard and the bacteria on the rocks of the Calypso Vents are technically your distant cousins.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Yeah, [arbitrary actor] is [arbitrary relatedness] to [arbitrary person] is always true and not very interesting.

Any given human is approximately 520,000th cousins 70,000th removed from any given chimp.

(5.2E5, 7E4), assuming human generations are approximately 29 years apart, chimps 24, and that it's stepped, also that we diverged about 13 mya.