Climbing the family tree

The Miami Herald reports that University of Miami accounting professor Tom Robinson turns out not to be a distant relative of the 13th-century Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan. A British DNA lab had told him he was, then backed off the claim. Robinson, who has been having some fun with the story, said "I have a pretty good idea of my deep ancestral roots as it is. I just can't put a name to it like I did before."

Got me thinking about all the famous people from the past I'm not related to: Moses, Buddha, Plato, Cleopatra, Confucius, Galileo, George Washington, Simon Bolivar, Abraham Lincoln, Crazy Horse, Thomas Edison -- it's a long list.

I am, I'm proud to say, a direct descendant of a German mercenary soldier who was hired by Britain's King George III to come over to the New World and help put down those pesky colonists and their foolish Revolution. This fellow had the presence of mind, as soon as the troopship docked in New York Harbor, to desert and flee to Virginia. Grand heritage, if I do say so myself -- even if that ancestor was an illegal immigrant.