Ozzy Osbourne survived Pompeii?

[Klingan]

Ok, fair enough, this is probably one of the strangest things I've read lately...Or ever. Ozzy Osbourne claims that his gene sequencing shows that his ancestors survived the eruption of 79 AD. I'm not quite sure how he found out thou... anyway:

 

English

 

"They also revealed he was related to Romans who died in Pompeii when the volcano Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago."

 

German (Longer)

 

"In seinem Erbgut fanden die Forscher denn auch interessante Merkmale, mit denen man

Edited November 11, 2010 by Klingan

[Melvadius]

All moved as requested

 

This wouldn't be another indepth report by that highly regarded totally UN-scientific rag the Daily Star by any chance would it.

 

These are the same people renowned for printing pictures of a B27 bomber on the moon along with other composite and otherwise totally out of scale images in its early days.

 

I presume they are still in the business of printing totally fabricated non-stories - enough said

[Klingan]

Yeah, it's, of course, not to be considered serious; I still cannot but wonder how they made the Pompeii connection, I really wish that they had some sort of reference concerning that.

[Melvadius]

Yeah, it's, of course, not to be considered serious; I still cannot but wonder how they made the Pompeii connection, I really wish that they had some sort of reference concerning that.

 

I suspect the latest Journal of Cellular Biochemistry findings, reported on by the BBC and others on the lab mix-up between horse and donkey DNA six years ago, creating a non-existent 'hybrid' horse, may be to blame

[GhostOfClayton]

There was an article on QI a few months (or was it years?) back that suggested that, statistically speaking, everyone in the western world is a descendant of Charlemagne.

 

Everyone who was born in Europe is descended from the 8th century king Charlemagne. The reason being is that since every person has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc., by the time you get back to the 13th century, you'll have had more ancestors than people who have lived on the planet. This was discovered in 1995, by a man called Mark Humphreys at Dublin University. He discovered that his wife was the great-granddaughter of King Edward III, 20 generations down the line. He also discovered that Hermann G

Edited November 11, 2010 by GhostOfClayton

[Kosmo]

There was an article on QI a few months (or was it years?) back that suggested that, statistically speaking, everyone in the western world is a descendant of Charlemagne.

 

Everyone who was born in Europe is descended from the 8th century king Charlemagne. The reason being is that since every person has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc., by the time you get back to the 13th century, you'll have had more ancestors than people who have lived on the planet. This was discovered in 1995, by a man called Mark Humphreys at Dublin University. He discovered that his wife was the great-granddaughter of King Edward III, 20 generations down the line. He also discovered that Hermann G

[Melvadius]

The problem with any statistics to do with the mobility or otherwise of humans is they don't generally allow for those who stayed in one place and only intermarried with others in the same area. Even without the interbreeding habits of our 'landed gentry' or those who may have practiced droit de signeur legally or otherwise you can build up a lot of families at all stratas of society effectively all intermarried and so related to each other in a very short period of time.

 

Mind you speaking of statistics this reminds me of the old Tommy Cooper joke about family and racial relationships which keeps cropping up in different guises on different forums:

 

"Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think it's Colin."

 

[DecimusCaesar]

I find it strange that he managed to trace his ancestors back directly to a famous historical event nearly 2,000 years ago. Genetic history has really started to become popular in the last few years what with books by Stephen Oppenheimer, Brian Sykes etc; TV Shows (100% English? I Think it was called on C4) and now stuff like this.

[caldrail]

I find it strange he manages to trace his way home, but then he can afford to pay people for that (Sorry, Ozzy, love the music)

 

DNA is all very well, but there are other means of tracing ancestory. Somethimes clues are found in the name. For instance, mine suggests that a dim distant ancestor was a land-holder beholden to no-one else until William the Conqueror did away with such fuedal anomalies. Never did like the French

[Viggen]

...the scary thing is that "Die Zeit" is one of the most respectable newspapers in the german speaking world....

[Silentium]

Ok, fair enough, this is probably one of the strangest things I've read lately...Or ever. Ozzy Osbourne claims that his gene sequencing shows that his ancestors survived the eruption of 79 AD. I'm not quite sure how he found out thou... anyway:

 

English

 

"They also revealed he was related to Romans who died in Pompeii when the volcano Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago."

 

German (Longer)

 

"In seinem Erbgut fanden die Forscher denn auch interessante Merkmale, mit denen man

[Klingan]

...the scary thing is that "Die Zeit" is one of the most respectable newspapers in the german speaking world....

 

 

Exactly - I read it to avoid this kind of stuff.