Tell me one interesting fact about one of your grandparents

[listsandbudgets]

Because I'm bored and nosey.

My nan could speak Italian but only in the imperative because she and my grand dad had Italian prisoners of war on their farm during world war 2

[TurtleCavalryIsSeriousShit]

My grandma was a child in a concentration camp during the Boer war.

My grandad fell off his horse when he met my grandma (years after the war of course)

[teaiseverything]

My nana was in the women's version of the masons.

My other nana thought that she'd had a twin sister who'd died during childbirth (along with her mother). What in fact happened was that my great grandmother had given birth to twins, a boy and girl, and died immediately after the birth. My great grandfather couldn't cope and so the children were split up and sent to different foster families. My nana had no knowledge of any of this and then, a couple of years before she died, we discovered that her twin brother had actually lived just a couple of streets away from her their whole lives.

[NutellaFitzgerald]

My grandmother worked at Bletchley park.

She remembers typing out bombing orders for a German town 20 mins from where i was born and grew up (some 35 years later). The space next to my childhood home (now used as a car park) was a family home bombed by the British during the war.

Might have been her bombing order.

[SenecaFalls]

My grandmother was a delegate to one of the Democratic Party conventions that nominated Roosevelt for president.

[phoenix1973]

му grandad was in ww2.
He was in Germany and worked as an army cook.
He would see the German kids wasting away so he would sneak them scraps of food from the bigwigs allowance (which was very generous).
He met and fell in love with my nan who was a German nurse.
He came back to the uk after the war.
She followed, they married but shop keepers refused to serve her and people graffitied their home and abused them in the street.
They remained married until he died.

[Camomila]

When my grandad got conscripted age 18, he was one of only a handful who could read and write properly (rural Italy), he spent three years as an office clerk then when his superiors ran away (when Italy surrendered) he wrote himself and his mates discharge papers and went home.

DGran was so poor that she and her two sisters and the neighbours girl had one ‘smart dress’ they shared for doctors visits.

[MaxPepsi]

My granny was a suffragette.

[bluebellforest]

My great grandfather got his left arm blown off in the Battle of the Somme.

[FoofFighter]

My nan was evacuated to Chatsworth house.

[InsomniacAnonymous]

Nothing interesting, but all 4 of my grandparents were born in the 1800's, so all Victorians.

[cjt110]

My Grandma lived in rural Ireland, moving to Dublin aged 13 with her Father to work as a Nanny in a house where her Father was the stablehand.

Aged 17 she saw an advert for nurses needed in England, booked a ticket on the ferry and off she went without telling a soul 'til she arrived. That was in 1953/54. She trained as a nurse and worked in nursing til I was approx 3 years of age - so 35 years. When she retired from nursing, she became a fundraising manager for the Hospice she had latterly nursed at. She did this for around 15 years. She retired aged 69 in May 2005. Sadly she was diagnosed with cancer not long after her retirement and died in October 2005.

She also kept bees.

[Ollivander84]

My nan sung opera and recorded an album and some singles
My grandad was a wrestler

[tillytoodles1]

My grandma was 49 when she had her 10th child - my mum.

[SeeKnievelHitThe17thBus]

My grandmother was supposed to be a GI bride, but he was called back to the US at the end of the war and never returned for her. Their respective sisters had started writing to each other and continued to do so into later life (still writing in the 1980s). No one now alive knows why he didn't come back but my grandmother, and presumably the sisters who wrote to each other, must have known. My mum didn't even know about the GI until her aunt mentioned it after GM died. I occasionally mourn the alternative universe in which I'm American (GM is maternal GM).

[GorgeousJaws]

My grandad was a foundling.

[HeedMove]

He was in the raf and lived all around the world including Malaysia.

[Hoppinggreen]

My Grandad fought in Burma wpand was captured by a The Japanese.
He spent a horrific time in a POW camp where he saw people beheaded and disembowelled.
He was sent to work on the Railway ( Bridge over The River Kwai) and expected to die there but while they were on the way the war ended and the Japanese ran away, leaving them locked in the railway carriages to die. They broke out and after a couple of days with no food or water The Americans arrived and saved the few of them still alive
He never forgave and when he was offered compensation he refused to take it. He literally couldn’t look at a South East Asian man without having a breakdown.
Also, while he was in the POW camp my Gran thought he was dead and “moved on” so when get did eventually get home there was a bit of a surprise waiting for him - my Mum! We still aren’t exactly sure who her father ( my real Grandad) was, my Gran would never tell, if she even knew

[Sleepyblueocean]

My grandparents didn't see each other for 4 years during the war having been married for just a few months before he went away.

[Gilead]

One Grandmother was a secretary to (at different times) the Pankhursts Hillaire Belloc and to H G Wells. The other was a refugee and ended up being mayor of one of the largest London Boroughs.

[FakeMews]

My grandad was in the British army in Egypt in the 1920s and was at the opening of Tutenkhamun's tomb so he said.

[MrsFring]

My nan was a paintress in The Potteries and worked alongside Susie Cooper.

[Witchend]

Grandad flew the Flying Bedstead.

[CMOTDibbler]

My grandad used the central heating pump of the National Physical Laboratory to develop the technique of defusing bombs by steaming the explosive out.

My grandmother spent 5 years in Great Ormond Street, seeing her parents for an hour once a week.

[marchonto2018]

These are such lovely stories!

[Sammysees]

My great grandad was the first ever person to be successfully treated for throat cancer at the Royal Marsden hospital. He went on to live till he was 92. Albeit with no voice.