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

Kneedeepinunicorns
I wonder if my grandmother stood near yours on the cliffs to watch Bleriot?! Mine was about 10 at the time, and not long recovered from a nasty bout of rheumatic fever that had kept her in bed for months.

Echoing someone above about how brave & resilient people were.

My Nan had a sister that was a few years older, when the sister died it came out in conversation that she wasn’t my mans sister at all.
She had lived a couple of houses down & when she was quite young her parents died so she moved in with my Nan & her family ( I doubt if any of it was done officially, she just moved in) quite amazing on its own but more so when you think my great grandparents were dirt poor, lived in a tiny house in a rough part of London and already had 8 kids!
My Nan never spoke of her as anything other than her sister

My grandpa and his brother were engineering draughtsmen and therefore reserved occupation in WW2. They had a buddy called Dicky and got him a job where they worked to save him being called up. Dicky was the local ‘tipster’ who was always telling my nan what nag to put her housekeeping on. She rarely won

Dicky, AKA Richard Tompkins survived the war and set up the Green Shield Stamp empire.

My nan was very resentful he didn’t reimburse her wasted bets out of his millions after all ‘if it wasn’t for Les and Sid getting him that job he could have been sent to France and been shot.’

My grandfather killed a leopard that had eaten a child.

Ariela how lovely! It must have been an amazing experience for those children there watching, with no idea how radically flight was going to progress in their lifetimes.

My grandad drove the flying Scotsman for the Queen. She used to write him Thankyou letters, we have one to thankhim for driving it/her on Christmas Day

My grandma was in ENSA and sang and danced for the troups in WW2

My grandfather owned a music hall/theatre how they met.

His mother when she was younger owned a speak easy coffee shop in new york. How he got into hospitality and hosting people.

How wonderfully heart warming are all these stories.

My grandma was born in 1921 her mum was 48 at the time which was maybe not as unusual at we might think given lack of reliable birth control. However more odd was that when my great grandmother was born in the 1870s her father was already in his 70s meaning my great great grandfather was actually born in the 18th century.

My grandad was the youngest of 11 brothers. They were all coal miners; my Grandad broke his back in a pit fall-in, was rescued, and walked again.

Posted too soon! And my gran (the coal miner's wife) had her first child at 19 and her last child at 47.

My grandma was born in a tent on Salisbury Plain - in January.

My 4 grandparents were all Victorian’s too.
A bomb on ww2 landed in my grandparents house. Luckily they were in the shelter.
They moved to the next street and that house stayed in the family until 1973
I was sorting through some medals in old tin and it turned out both grandads were in the army during ww2
Nobody told me

My Grandfather was physics teacher to a scientist who later went to discover pulsars (didn't get the Nobel prize because she was a woman). My Grandmother was a pharmacist in the 1920s, fairly unusual for a woman at that time. My other Grandfather was in the Communist Party while he was in the RAF during the war as was a bit notorious for it.

Love this thread.

My paternal grandad was a sniper in the first world war, and at some point ran Liverpool's refuse department. His house was furnished with thrown out stuff, a lot of which my DBs and I inherited. My maternal grandad designed a sweet wrapper still in use today.

My grandfather was a bigamist. I am one of his grandchildren from his third marriage.

After my grandmother died in her 60s, (many years ago - possibly 1950ish - and long before I was born), it was discovered that many or all of her internal organs were on the wrong side. Or so I was told. She had still managed to have 7 children however, including a set of twins. I would be interested to know more, but sadly all her generation and the next are no longer with us to ask.

My grandfather has 2 hospital wards named after him.

My grandad invented prosthetic legs for servicemen who lost limbs in WW2 along with other medical equipment like the saw they use to cut plasters of broken arms etc. He also built his own car.....

My grandmother raised 22 children!

My family is from India. During partition my grandmother and her family hid a Muslim lady, whose family had been their neighbours for generations, in their house after all of her family had been murdered.

My grandmother was the original recycler and re user. Nothing was thrown out, never bought plastic even when they were the in thing, grew own veg, sold extra produce to local shops, bought second hand clothes, reused paper so as not to waste it cutting down trees. I could go on but when I see how all the things we are supposed to be doing for a better environment I can honestly say my family have been doing it for about a century. 60 years ago at aged 40 she was head cook at massive factory of 300 men. Women only worked in kitchens and alas I will add she was not an equal opportunist despite high powered position herself. When money was tight she took in lodgers and her family shared rooms to do this. No benefits of any kind then, no work money = no food. No work meant you did whatever job you had to - mining, cleaning, shop work. She was destined for the local grammar school but the war put a stop to that. I often wonder how more inspirational she would have been with an education that pushed her mind.

I love all these stories.

The ones about resilience really resonate. My dad (who is 80) told me that while his mum was in psychiatric hospital (she was in and out all her life, and dad had a terrible childhood) he would cycle 20 miles each way to go and see his grandparents for the weekend so he would get decent food. He was 11.

And while my other grandmother was in hospital for a year, and then confined to bed for another year, her mother moved in to look after her three children as grandad was trundling round in a submarine somewhere. Great grandmother was a wheelchair user herself and they had no help.

My Nan was pregnant (by someone else) with my eldest aunt when my grandad married her, they went on to have 7 more children together but both of them died before they reached 65 due to smoking related diseases - most of their children still smoke

According to my grandfather he built all the roads in the city I grew up in. If he was driving you anywhere, he’d constantly point out that he built this road and that road. He was a road worker so he probably had at least been involved in resurfacing many of them at some point or other, but to hear him tell it you’d think he’d singlehandedly built the entire city.