From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia



A few days ago I learned that... Abe Lincoln is related to 2 famous ppl that we all know (of).



Do you have a story to share about this??? ... -- that you were very surprised to
learn that xxxxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyyy were related.



This is more of a trivia-question than a puzzle.
WHO met the most number of US presidents?


__________________________

Ambiguous headline -------On the BBC website:
"Migrants making false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK".

(At first, I didn't really see a 2nd meaning or parsing)



There must be sevearl ways to parse this.

but it is not truly ambiguous or confusing, is it?
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From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia


HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

A few days ago I learned that... Abe Lincoln is related to 2 famous ppl that we all know (of).

From a database of questionable reliability I see that Abe is shown as

. 1st cousin 6x removed of George Clooney
. 2nd cousin 2x removed of Robert LaFolette (very famous Senator and Governor)

1st cousin 6x removed (which is 32 times closer than 6th cousin 1x removed)
is the relationship I have to the great American hero John Brown.

The shared DNA portion with an N'th cousin K'x removed is
2^-(2N + K + 1)

Do you have a story to share about this???
that you were very surprised to learn that ...

I find it interesting that experts concur that Henry Cary, Baron Hunsdon,
was not only the 1st cousin of Queen Elizabeth on their mothers' side,
but also probably her half-brother on their father's side.

This is more of a trivia-question than a puzzle.
WHO met the most number of US presidents?

Perhaps Queen Elizabeth II ??
Her reign intersected with 14 distinct U.S. Presidencies; presumably
most of them met her at special functions.

Ambiguous headline -------On the BBC website:
"Migrants making false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK".

Two parsings:
(Migrants (making false domestic abuse claims)) to stay in UK
(Migrants making (false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK)

Strictly speaking NEITHER is a valid grammatical sentence.
(Neither the infinitive "to stay" nor the gerund "making" is valid
as a principal verb, though headlines are often non-sentences.)

The ambiguity can be fixed (and the clauses made into proper sentences)
by inserting "are" before each principal verb.
A comma before "to stay" might fix the ambiguity in the first parsing,
but, I think, is disallowed under most commatization rules.

Cheers,
James

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From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia

James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote or quoted:

From a database of questionable reliability I see that Abe is shown as
. 1st cousin 6x removed of George Clooney
. 2nd cousin 2x removed of Robert LaFolette (very famous Senator and Governor)

Yes, but James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States,
discovered and published an original mathematical proof.

(In 1876, while serving in Congress, Garfield developed a unique
proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a trapezoid. His work was
published in the New-England Journal of Education on April 1, 1876.)


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From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia


James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

A few days ago I learned that... Abe Lincoln is related to 2 famous ppl that we all know (of).

From a database of questionable reliability I see that Abe is shown as

. 1st cousin 6x removed of George Clooney
. 2nd cousin 2x removed of Robert LaFolette (very famous Senator and Governor)

1st cousin 6x removed (which is 32 times closer than 6th cousin 1x removed) is the relationship I have to the great American hero John Brown.

The shared DNA portion with an N'th cousin K'x removed is
2^-(2N + K + 1)

Do you have a story to share about this???
that you were very surprised to learn that ...

I find it interesting that experts concur that Henry Cary, Baron Hunsdon,
was not only the 1st cousin of Queen Elizabeth on their mothers' side,
but also probably her half-brother on their father's side.

This is more of a trivia-question than a puzzle.
WHO met the most number of US presidents?

Perhaps Queen Elizabeth II ??
Her reign intersected with 14 distinct U.S. Presidencies; presumably
most of them met her at special functions.

Ambiguous headline -------On the BBC website:
"Migrants making false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK".

Two parsings:
(Migrants (making false domestic abuse claims)) to stay in UK
(Migrants making (false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK)

Strictly speaking NEITHER is a valid grammatical sentence.
(Neither the infinitive "to stay" nor the gerund "making" is valid
as a principal verb, though headlines are often non-sentences.)

The ambiguity can be fixed (and the clauses made into proper sentences)
by inserting "are" before each principal verb.
A comma before "to stay" might fix the ambiguity in the first parsing,
but, I think, is disallowed under most commatization rules.

Cheers,
James

> > Ambiguous headline -------On the BBC website:
> > "Migrants making false domestic abuse claims to stay in UK".

XXXXXXXXXX to stay in USA, as in
(the practice of ..........) to stay in USA
that the practice will continue



Tom Hanks has a close-knit family, including his wife, actress Rita Wilson, and four children: Colin, Elizabeth, Chet, and Truman. His siblings are Sandra, Larry, and Jim Hanks. Notably, he is a distant relative of President Abraham Lincoln through Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks.

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From Newsgroup: rec.games.trivia


ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) posted:

James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote or quoted:

From a database of questionable reliability I see that Abe is shown as
. 1st cousin 6x removed of George Clooney
. 2nd cousin 2x removed of Robert LaFolette (very famous Senator and Governor)

Yes, but James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States,
discovered and published an original mathematical proof.

(In 1876, while serving in Congress, Garfield developed a unique
proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a trapezoid. His work was
published in the New-England Journal of Education on April 1, 1876.)

[Yes, but ] ----- what's the rhetorical connection?

___________________________


Diana was the great-great-great-great-grandniece of the famous Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire.

Princess Diana was a direct descendant of GeorgianarCOs parents,
making Georgiana her 4x great-aunt.

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