Here's an interesting tale from Wikipedia's biography of the great Romantic painter Delacroix:
There is reason to believe that his father, Charles-François Delacroix, was infertile at the time of Eugène's conception and that his real father was Talleyrand, who was a friend of the family and successor of Charles Delacroix as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and whom the adult Eugène resembled in appearance and character.[5] Throughout his career as a painter, he was protected by Talleyrand, who served successively the Restoration and king Louis-Philippe, and ultimately as ambassador of France in Great Britain, and later by Talleyrand's grandson, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph, duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III and speaker of the French House of Commons.
Talleyrand is a major historical figure, who, among much else, negotiated for France at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 a very mild retribution from the victorious Great Powers after two decades of war. The moderate and durable settlement that Talleyrand talked the crowned heads of Europe into agreeing to after France's Revolutionary and Napoleonic adventures is often contrasted favorably with the harsher and shorter-lasting peace dished out at the Versailles Conference after WWI.
Can you think of other examples where one famous individual turns out to have been the quasi-secret child of another? It's a pretty interesting phenomenon, one that is hard not to pay attention to, but likely examples don't come readily to mind.
For example, if you told me that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a 6'-4" biracial adoptee of tremendous athletic ability, is really the son of, say, Michael Jordan's 6'-8" sidekick Scottie Pippen, I might almost believe you. (Note: I just made that up.) But, there are surprisingly few confirmed examples of today's sports stars being the secret sons of yesterday's sports stars.
One reason for the Scandal Shortage is that there just aren't that many famous people. Talleyrand and Delacroix, for example, are of that tiny number of figures of such historical importance that we only use their surnames.
For example, if you told me that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a 6'-4" biracial adoptee of tremendous athletic ability, is really the son of, say, Michael Jordan's 6'-8" sidekick Scottie Pippen, I might almost believe you. (Note: I just made that up.) But, there are surprisingly few confirmed examples of today's sports stars being the secret sons of yesterday's sports stars.
One reason for the Scandal Shortage is that there just aren't that many famous people. Talleyrand and Delacroix, for example, are of that tiny number of figures of such historical importance that we only use their surnames.
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158 comments:
Obama-Frank Marshall Davis?
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.ch/2008/09/obamas-real-father-connecting-dots.html
"The moderate and durable settlement that Talleyrand talked the crowned heads of Europe into agreeing to after France's Revolutionary and Napoleonic adventures is often contrasted favorably with the harsher and shorter-lasting peace dished out at the Versailles Conference after WWI."
This is because the French are good losers and bad winners! Compare US and French reactions to defeat in Vietnam, or UK & French reactions to the US-mandated Suez debacle. The post-WW2 settlement was helped by the French having been so comprehensively defeated early on, but allowed to pretend they were one of the victorious powers in 1945, ignoring Vichy.
Gianni Agnelli sure looked like JFK Jr.
http://www.vintageseekers.com/vantage-point/behind-the-wheel?image=4
Plutarch reports a rumor that Marcus Brutus was the son of Julius Caesar.
West Hunter had a post discussing the actual rarity of cuckoldry.
Tangential to this, I like the story of d'Alembert: out-of-wedlock child of two upper class French; left on the doorstep of a church at birth; placed in an orphanage; went on to become a towering figure in Mechanics. It must have been the good schooling found in 18th century France.
There's a long-standing rumor that Webster "Webb" Hubbell is Chelsea Clinton's real father. Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed to have been raped by Bill Clinton in 1978, said that afterward he told her not to worry about getting pregnant because he was sterile due to a bout of childhood mumps.
There's also the fairly convincing belief that Prince Harry's real father is James Hewitt, who had an affair with Princess Diana.
Dr J and that girl tennis player.
Julius Erving had a secret (biracial) daughter named Alexandra Stephenson that played professional tennis. She made it to the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1999
“You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it.”
French Foreign Minister Talleyrand to U. S. Foreign Minister Robert Livingston following the Louisiana Purchase
Liv Tyler.
Wasn't it Talleyrand who told Napoleon that allowing the Louisiana Purchase was a dumb idea because it would allow the USA to turn into a mega-country that would overshadow Europe?
Napoleon apparently figured it was so far off in the future he did not care.
Or, maybe, a US President who was the not-so-secret son of a famous black communist leader?
Wilt Chamberlain famously slept around. I expect most successful black athletes do also. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's the source of the apparently increasing number of excellent black athletes today. Many potential mothers would not abort such children; they may look on them as meal tickets for the future. Evolution in action.
Robert Hume
I suspect that the use of surnames for identifiers is as much to do with their uniqueness as their historical importance. Of the three WWII era political giants - Hitler, Stalin and Churchill, only Churchill's surname was the one he was born with. Herr Schicklgruber and Comrade Djugashvili adopted unique and memorable surnames to fit the images they were to craft for themselves.
Rich and famous guys have lots of women from peon families chasing after them. Rock stars and athletes certainly have no shortage. You hear about these bastard kids from time to time, usually because of their mothers filing paternity suits against the father, but you usually don't hear of too many of these kids achieving greatness themselves. Liv Tyler pops into my mind, but I'd have to spend some time on it to try to think of others.
In this day and age it may not harm people's careers to be a bastard, but not too long ago it would have been a serious mark against you. So for talented kids at that time it probably would have been better for the mother to show discretion and not make a public spectacle, and for the father to quietly pull some strings for the kid like in your Talleyrand example.
Norah Jones...kind of. It isn't a secret that she is the child of Ravi Shankar...on the other hand I would't call that common knowldge either among most Americans.
George Obama has managed to achieve some fame, despite his famous progenitors.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/George-W-Obama/198592273491302?ref=stream&group_id=0
I would've figured based on who is effeminate, that the kid would've been Barry Bush...
Big league relief pitcher Tug McGraw denied being the father of singing superstar Tim McGraw for years.
The story goes that young Tug knocked-up a local girl during a stint in the minors. Tug refused to pay anything for or even meet the bastard child over the years.
As the kid was nearing college age, Tug was forced to meet the child and mother by lawyers in regards for college tuition money. Tug's lawyer took one look at the kid and advised Tug to pay up as the kid looked exactly like him.
Then kid becomes a huge superstar (on account of sharing his father's looks, surely not his own musical talent).
Sunday Morning did a profile on Tim McGraw who find out he was Tug McGraw's son when he was rooting thur a closet looking for Christmas presents and found his birth certificate. He said his father's fame convinced him he too could achieve greatness.
Does Liv Tyler count?
Because of regression toward the mean, there are rarely two generations of famous people from the same family. The exception is careers where nepotism plays a big role, e.g., politics and Hollywood, but usually only legitimate offspring benefit from nepotism.
Talleyrand's illegitimate son Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut, had an affair and an illegitimate son with Napoleon III's mom, Hortense, who was the daughter of Napoleon I's first wife Josephine (so Napoleon I's step-daughter). It's a long shot but some think Charles Joseph might also have been Napoleon III's real father, rather than Napoleon I's brother Louis. In any case, Hortense and Louis hated each other and her infidelity was well-established, so it's an open question as to whether Napoleon III was really Louis's son.
And by the way, Charles Joseph's grandmother was probably an illegitimate daughter of King Louis XV.
The entertainment industry has lots of rumors over whom begat who…Michael Bay has subtly used interviews to spread the info that his mom was a cum dumpster for director John Frankenheimer. I remember seeing an interview with the industrial group Marilyn Manson in which the bass player Twiggy claimed his mother was a traveling groupie impregnated by someone or other in the rock band Mountain.
There is the "famous gene"?
A few years back there was a minor tabloid newspaper kerfuffle in Britain concerning the parentage of one Paula Yates (the estranged spouse of Bob Geldof, amongst other things). Famously, she was well known as the daughter of Jesse Yates. To anyone who came of age in the 'everyday seems like Sunday' austere 'god-slot' Sundays of the 1970s, Jesse Yates was a big cheese. He hosted 'Stars on Sunday' - an interminable melange of faux religious observances, solem hymns sung by such luminaries as Moira Anderson and Kennth McKellar, a bit of non-conformist organ music played by Yates himself and all round miserable exhibition of piouseness that bored the living bejesus out of millions of schoolkids throughout the land in the dyas when the UK only had 3 TV channels.
Jesse Yates looked well the part, bald-headed with mutton-chop sideburns and a stern Yorkshire accent he was the very model of the forbidding English protestant minister. Only really he wasn't - he famously ran off with a stripper half his age and was promptly sacked from the show which subsequently disappeared.
However, much later, back in the mid 90s it was stragely revealed that Paula Yates was not, in fact, the biological daughter of Jesse Yates, but the daughter of an even more famous stalwart of 1970s TV, Hughie Green ('tonight folks, it's your vote that counts' said in a cod American accent).
Michael Hutchence of Australian rockers INXS, the paramor of Paula Yates committed suicide around about the same time as the tabloid revelation. Paula Yates did the same a short while later. It's moot whether the Hughie Green revelations had any connection with this tragedy.
There's been a ton of speculation lately that Mel Gibson could be the father of Jodi Foster's children.
The two of them are certainly united in their hatred of the Scots-Irish who run Hollyweird.
In today's culture, what incentive is there for a woman to keep the paternity of her bastard offspring secret, especially if Daddy is rich/famous/powerful?
You can´t get more famous than Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander V.
Louis XIV was probably Cardinal Mazarin's son.
Brutus's mother, who was also Cato's sister, was Caesar's mistress, but he would have been 15 when he fathered Brutus if he did, so he probably didn't.
One theory holds the Man in the Iron (really velvet) Mask was Louis XIV's father.
Not on point, but you have the incident of Steve Jobs and his biological sister the novelist.
Julius Erving and tennis player Alexandra Stevenson comes to mind.
Norah Jones and Ravi Shankar?
Prince Harry and Diana's horse guy?
Well, these aren't "secrets" now, but in his early youth, country singer Tim McGraw had no idea his father was a famous relief pitcher in major league baseball.
Liv Tyler didn't know her father was the lead singer of Aerosmith until she was in her teens (of course, the guy she THOUGHT was her father was pretty famous too- Todd Rundgren).
From 1999: "Julius Erving said Friday he is the father of tennis phenom Alexandra Stevenson, whose run to the Wimbledon semifinals has been shadowed by reports she is the basketball great's daughter." Much, much less famous than her father, however.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/tennis/1999/wimbledon/news/1999/07/02/erving_stevenson/
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/02/03/slates-matt-yglesias-victim-of-bureaucracy/
Michael Bay and John Frankenheimer.
Matthew Vaughn and George de Vere Drummond.
And that's just directors!
There's a great deal of dispute over the paternity of Catherine the Great's son Paul. He looked a great deal like her lover, Count Saltykov, but he seemed to have the same mental health issues of Catherine's husband, Czar Peter III.
Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken.
Borodin comes to mind if not quite an exact fit. He was the bastard some of Russian nobility.
Only on ISteve do we get to ponder the significance of the seigneur's bastard.
In addition to writing Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford was the son of Elizabeth I.
Re: Obama-Frank Marshall Davis?
See Dinesh D'Souza's documentary "2016 Obama's America." There is an interview with Barack's Kenyan half brother. They're obviously closely related. Certain shared physical mannerisms struck me as much as the facial similarity. And I doubt Frank Marshall Davis fathered the Kenyan brother.
Gore Vidal's novel "Burr" speculated that Aaron Burr fathered Martin Van Burin. Not sure there was any historical evidence behind that supposition.
There are rumors that Chelsea Clinton's real dad is Web Hubbell.
Talleyrand was amazed that Alexander Hamilton had to struggle financially. He presumed that as the chief American financial minister he should have been able to pocket enough for himself to be comfortable.
This makes a case for the idea that the generation of the Founding Fathers was historically exceptional. Certainly today someone like Al Gore feels no compunction at private financial benefit from public policy positions.
Gore would like Talleyrand. He would recognize a kindred spirit.
Albertosaurus
" But, there are surprisingly few confirmed examples of today's sports stars being the secret sons of yesterday's sports stars."
The reason being that with US child support laws being what they are, any famous baby daddy will be dragged into court by the sluttish mother probably within 24 hours of the dipstick in the home pregnancy kit turning blue; later DNA tests will conclusively prove or disprove parentage.
Only on ISteve do we get to ponder the significance of the seigneur's bastard.
Not so. In "the real world" that students inhabit you cannot be in the incrowd if you don't think that Clint Eastwood is Stan Laurel's son.
Julius Erving said Friday he is the father of tennis phenom Alexandra Stevenson
She had a great start, but her career was ruined by shoulder problems...
Minnesota Fats and maybe singer Etta James.
There was a book out about Lincoln's supposed belief that he was Jefferson's grandson. Something like that.
Also, of course there is God and Jesus Christ. Tough to get the DNA match on that one but it's been a rumor for 2000 years.
Sir Carol Reed was the illegitimate son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Valentin_Alkan#Delaborde
Only on ISteve do we get to ponder the significance of the seigneur's bastard.
Not so. In "the real world" that students inhabit you cannot be in the incrowd if you don't think that Clint Eastwood is Stan Laurel's son.
I stand corrected. Come to think of it, thanks to the fashion of the day, one can go to Monticello and have an entire part of the exhibit devoted to the study of Jefferson's romps with Sally Hemings and their possible progeny.
Raising a child that's not your own is a bum deal in 21st Century America. Cad or dad is no longer the dichotomy it once was. Today one could enjoy all the benefits of being a player, then re-establish relationships with illegitimate offspring at one's convenience. Every boy wants to know who his real father is; he'd have to be a real boyscout to accept his adoptive father as "dad" and simply let it go at that. Most likely he'll instead seek out the biological father (with some guilt pangs for betraying the adoptive one), confront him, get into a shouting match, then tearfully reconcile. Adoptive dad then shunted to the side as "real" father and son catch up for "lost years", similarities due to lineage (including quite complex personality ones) being too fascinating not to explore. This of course does not even begin to consider allure of a famous/successful bio-dad. Culture became accepting of these sort of lineage quests about the time of- oh, Luke Skywalker ("Can it about those power converters, Uncle Owen! So, dad, tell me about these cool new powers I'm supposed to have within me...")
Family-mending customs that strike us as weird now have strong common-sense (agrarian) underpinnings. Mothers adopting their daughter's illegitimate offspring as their own, etc. Now with a no-shame culture and guaranteed support from the state, boring provider adoptive dads have had their last legs cut out from beneath them.
I wonder how many of these people are really children of extraterrestrials?
Word on the street is that the real father of Henry Carey (1st Baron Hunsdon) was the whelp of Henry VIII.
My neighbor is the King of the World, and thought most people think his father was Charlie who teaches over at the high school, a few of us around these parts know that his real dad was the President of the Universe.
This reminds me that we have never learned who Bill Clinton's real father is. I don't think he was anyone famous, but it would be interesting to know. One theory I read, perhaps it was here, is that his dad was a doctor his mother worked for as a nurse.
"Every boy wants to know who his real father is; he'd have to be a real boyscout to accept his adoptive father as "dad" and simply let it go at that."
Not likely. The adopted/abandoned children I've known all felt a fair amount of contempt for their biological fathers. They may make exceptions if they found out their real dad was rich or famous, but if they're famous themselves it may not mean much to them.
Billionaire Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics, Netscape, WebMD, etc.) was hit up by his poor, deadbeat old father for money, and famously told him "No." Steve Jobs found out who his real father was but supposedly never even deigned to meet him, not even when he was dying. He did keep in touch with his biological mother, though, as well as his adoptive parents (whose surname he kept).
Word on the street is that the real father of Henry Carey (1st Baron Hunsdon) was Henry VIII. (Edited to correct grievous mistake.)
Its tough to have secret children in a world of birth control. Illegitimate births don't happen much anymore. Maybe in China due to the 1 child policy.
1 in 200 men direct descendants of Genghis Khan
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/#.URAhtGfhelc
seems sally hemming s kids were likely Thomas brothers not his
Do famous people ever donate anonymously to sperm banks?
there are surprisingly few confirmed examples of today's sports stars being the secret sons of yesterday's sports stars.
I guess it's only surprising if you think that it happened a lot and is being kept secret. Maybe you hear about it so seldom because it rarely happened/happens?
The biological father of Goofy was actually Pluto. If you look at them side by side, the resemblance is unmistakable.
Back in the day, Disney Studios treated this as a great scandal and covered it up. Donald Duck got wind of it, but was threatened with public exposure of his scandalous relationship with his "nephews" Huey, Dewey, and Louie if he didn't keep his beak shut.
Only now can insiders in Hollywood talk of it openly.
This reminds me that we have never learned who Bill Clinton's real father is.
Neither Clinton's nor Obama's.
The adopted/abandoned children I've known all felt a fair amount of contempt for their biological fathers. They may make exceptions if they found out their real dad was rich or famous, but if they're famous themselves it may not mean much to them.
And neither Clinton nor Obama has shown the slightest interest in discovering the true identities of their biological fathers.
Unless maybe Frank Marshall Davis secretly confessed to Obama, way back in the 1970s.
BTW, some folks think that JFK might have passed through the gambling & prostitution houses of Hot Springs, AR, at just about the right time to have knocked up Virginia Kelley, and if he was Bubba's real father, then it would make their famous picture together even more poignant.
See Dinesh D'Souza's documentary "2016 Obama's America." There is an interview with Barack's Kenyan half brother. They're obviously closely related. Certain shared physical mannerisms struck me as much as the facial similarity.
I do not disagree.
However, have you watched "Dreams From My Real Father"? There is a lot of physical resemblance between Davis and Obama, too.
Every boy wants to know who his real father is; he'd have to be a real boyscout to accept his adoptive father as "dad" and simply let it go at that. Most likely he'll instead seek out the biological father (with some guilt pangs for betraying the adoptive one), confront him, get into a shouting match, then tearfully reconcile.
Maybe my experience is exceptional, but every adoptive child I've known has tended not to want to associate much with the birth parents. I think a lot of the angst supposedly felt by adoptive kids is felt by a minority of them, and exploited as a plot point for movies and TV series. I'd guess it's similar to the way gays are all the rage on celluloid, and you'd think they were 1/3 of the population based on their over-representation at the movies or on TV when they're only about 1 to 2% of the overall population.
Is this your way of saying that Milton Freidman is your bio dad.
There was a book out about Lincoln's supposed belief that he was Jefferson's grandson. Something like that.
Hah. Everyone knows that Lincoln was Satan's grandson.
I'm surprised you chose Scotty Pippen. He was widely rumored to be somewhat dumb - probably would have sired a low Wonderlic.
I just picked Pippen because both have unusually prominent noses.
Scotty, who came from dire rural poverty, was smart enough to figure out quickly enough that there be'd plenty of glory if he played the role of Michael Jordan's sidekick rather than act like an NBA diva, and also that Jordan was a good role model in how to dress, how to answer press conference questions, and so forth.
Maybe my experience is exceptional, but every adoptive child I've known has tended not to want to associate much with the birth parents.
How many of them were adopted by neurotic self-hating WASP robots?
I think a lot of the angst supposedly felt by adoptive kids is felt by a minority of them, and exploited as a plot point for movies and TV series.
If you're trying to say; it makes good drama, then say it. Mind you, real life tends to be like neither Hollywood nor Pleasantville.
Lincoln was a real-life Sith.
"There's a great deal of dispute over the paternity of Catherine the Great's son Paul. He looked a great deal like her lover"
He had a horse face?
Peter
http://www.vdare.com/articles/republican-obsess-on-israel-iran-ignoring-threats-to-us-from-the-entire-rest-of-the-world
Hagel is Mel-Gibsoned.
http://laughingsquid.com/totally-looks-like-famous-people-their-look-alikes/
"Anonymous said...
If you're trying to say; it makes good drama, then say it. Mind you, real life tends to be like neither Hollywood nor Pleasantville."
Pleasantville IS Hollywood.
Hollywood loves to tell us how the reality of the 50's isn't like the,.....what, exactly? The Hollywood portrayal of the 50's? The one that they propagated? Sure it wasn't. Not very much is like its Hollywood portrayal. But now we're expected to take their word about what that decade was really like.
When people look back to the 50s with fondness, they're not longing for Hollywood's fifties, but for the decade that actually existed.
"Chicago said...
Do famous people ever donate anonymously to sperm banks?"
They do if that sperm bank is called "Connie Hamzy".
It's funny that you picked Scottie Pippen as Kapernick's ersatz father; I made the EXACT same joke to someone last week; they both have the same vague Arab look. Pippen even married a Persian.
Michael Steele is another distinct possibility.
"Wasn't it Talleyrand who told Napoleon that allowing the Louisiana Purchase was a dumb idea because it would allow the USA to turn into a mega-country that would overshadow Europe?"
It's my impression that the French government had great trouble luring French colonists to America. Nobody wanted to go. At some point they sent a small number of female orphans so that the small number of French fur trappers and lumberjacks living in America would be able to have some white offspring. It's my understanding that almost all modern Quebeckers descend from those few orphan girls.
L’Amérique (in the grandest sense) didn't happen because at the level of the French masses there was no will for it to happen. Is this related to the fact that the French stopped having large families way before most other Europeans? It's a possibility. Perhaps there was some sort of a fall-off in vigor, in the will to live, risk and multiply. At the time when the Brits settled America and Australia they weren't fey or decadent. They only became that afterwards. Perhaps this happened to the French a century or two earlier than to the Brits.
Governments mostly just react to stimuli. Why keep an empty wasteland, a resource that you're only able to exploit at a small fraction of its capacity, when someone who obviously will be able to exploit it more fully is offering a price that reflects that? And without that sale the same result could have come about in a Texas-like fashion anyway. There were simply more land-hungry Brits than Frenchmen arriving in the New World.
I thought Bill Clinton was an illegitimate Rockefeller? Arkansas?
Pippen and Kapernick´s share a "vague Arab look"... Agree, if you are speaking of Sudanese Arabs!
" Anonymous said...
There is the "famous gene"?"
Sure is. Its rumored to be co-regulated with the gene for Germanic surnames.
Lenny Kravitz had a moderately famous mom and a successful but not famous father. So I guess he is an example of regression working in the opposite direction.
Its rumored that Khloe Kardashian is OJs kid...
The problem with the secret children question is the 'secret' word- if we knew, it wouldn't be a secret....
Kaepernick looks like a Muslim, with that nose.
"Wilt Chamberlain famously slept around. I expect most successful black athletes do also. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's the source of the apparently increasing number of excellent black athletes today. Many potential mothers would not abort such children; they may look on them as meal tickets for the future. Evolution in action."
Greg Cochran thinks that Jews got smarter after entering the banking and money-changing businesses because smarts counted for more in those business than in farming. Within that business you got ahead by being smart.
To some extent blacks have entered the sports and entertainment businesses. Financial success in sports counts for more among them than among any other group. This is because wealth doesn't come to them in many other ways.
A population's entry into a niche probably inevitably starts a selection process for traits important within that niche. So aristocrats probably became braver and braver over time, until gunpowder had reduced the need for their bravery, and then the machine gun eliminated that need altogether. Jews became smarter and smarter over time because smarts brought you success in the lending-on-interest business. And blacks are now probably slowly becoming more athletic.
"There's been a ton of speculation lately that Mel Gibson could be the father of Jodi Foster's children.
The two of them are certainly united in their hatred of the Scots-Irish who run Hollyweird."
-So that's why I never see her in movies anymore....
"Anonymous said...
Lincoln was a real-life Sith."
And here everyone thought Palpatine died at the end of 6. That Lucas is one suspenseful story telling mofo.
It's my impression that the French government had great trouble luring French colonists to America. --anonyme
As did the Dutch and Swedish governments, which left less of a trace than did the French. Because no one would leave a country rich and powerful enough to found overseas colonies, if it was at all stable.
England was the unstable exception, which is why we post in English. Even Spain and Portugal had trouble getting women over, and relied on miscegenation for much of their colonial growth.
It's my impression that the French government had great trouble luring French colonists to America. Nobody wanted to go. At some point they sent a small number of female orphans so that the small number of French fur trappers and lumberjacks living in America would be able to have some white offspring. It's my understanding that almost all modern Quebeckers descend from those few orphan girls.
France never had any big population booms like England or Germany, nor agricultural disruptions like southern Italy, Ireland, or Scandinavia. There really was no reason for massive numbers of poor people to emigrate anywhere - especially during the era of New France.
The French liked big government, and were always paranoid about their language. No Wild West for them. And even settling in the eastern United States and Canada-era Quebec meant anglophone domination. The French settlers in Algeria were still close to France, and could speak French 100% of the time. The Arabs there were more likely to kick the French out (which they did) than to force Arabic down their throats.
In the nineteenth century, it was rumored that Indiana territorial governor Thomas Posey was the illegitimate son of George Washington, although historians have generally discredited the idea.
L’Amérique ... didn't happen because at the level of the French masses there was no will for it to happen. Is this related to the fact that the French stopped having large families way before most other Europeans?
Not to my knowledge. France had much greater carrying capacity than England and especially Scotland and Ireland. That and a steady rate of population increase with no sudden booms. At the time of the first French Revolution, 1789, France has nearly three times the population of all the British Isles, at a comparable standard of living.
It's a possibility. Perhaps there was some sort of a fall-off in vigor, in the will to live, risk and multiply. At the time when the Brits settled America and Australia they weren't fey or decadent. They only became that afterwards. Perhaps this happened to the French a century or two earlier than to the Brits.
It's not a matter of France being "fey" - which is a common Anglo ignorance. It was a matter of France not having a sudden population increase at the same times as Britain. Also, the French might have put their energy into making revolutions rather than into colonization. Perhaps that was the standard English reaction to poverty and oppression - band together with a few dozen families, sail off somewhere, start a colony, and hope it all works out. The French might have thought running away was cowardly - better to stand and fight and overthrow the Ancien Regime, and hope it all works out.
France is a really, really nice piece of real estate. Why leave?
Kaepernick looks like a Muslim, with that nose.
Muslims are a religion, not a race, and not even a religion closely associated with a certain ethnic groups (such as Judaism and Hinduism).
A Muslim nose makes about as much sense as a Christian chin, or Buddhist earlobes.
Cynical Europeans will tell you that Hello Kitty is the bastard offspring of Musti and Miffy, who slipped away from prying eyes at the mascots' box at the '72 Olympics to a Sapporo steam bath.
Hollywood loves to tell us how the reality of the 50's isn't like the,.....what, exactly? The Hollywood portrayal of the 50's? The one that they propagated? Sure it wasn't. Not very much is like its Hollywood portrayal. But now we're expected to take their word about what that decade was really like.
HAPPY DAYS is one of the best (worst) examples of the False Fifties. For some superficial details, HD was an accurate vision of the 1950s and early 1960s. But not of society in general. And as for depicting high school and teenagers, it might as well be set on another planet.
Karl Malone has fathered like an entire WNBA team of illegitimate children. Also has one illegimate son in the NFL.
Someone mentioned Prince Harry being the spawn of James Hewitt and Princess Diana.
Ive heard gossip that Prince Andrew is not Prince Philip's son. He doesnt exactly look like Charles, Anne & Edward. Of course that lack of resemblance may be the only source of the rumour. Who the daddy might be, Ive no idea.
A Muslim nose makes about as much sense as a Christian chin, or Buddhist earlobes. --anonymuslim
Oh yeah?
Its rumored that Khloe Kardashian is OJs kid...
Hmmm. She appears white than Kris though. Im not sure I can buy into that one.
The following is from The Atlas of World Population History by McEvedy and Jones:
The British Iles: 1 AD: 0.8 M. 1000 AD: 2 M. 1300: 5 M. 1500: 5M. 1600: 6.25 M. 1700: 9.25 M. 1800: 16 M. 1900: 42M.
The area within the modern borders of Germany: 1 AD: 3M, 1000 AD: 3.5M, 1300 AD: 9M, 1500 AD: 9M, 1600 AD: 12M, 1700 AD: 13M, 1800 AD: 18M, 1900 AD: 43M.
The area within the modern borders of France: 1 AD: 5 M. 1000 AD: 6.5 M. 1300 AD: 16 M. 1500 AD: 15 M. 1600 AD: 18.5 M. 1700 AD: 22 M. 1800 AD: 29 M. 1900 AD: 41 M.
At some point in the 18th century, and from what I've read elsewhere, it was early in the 18th century, French population growth fell far below the European average. This is hard to imagine now, but when Napoleon attacked Russia, metropolitan France had more people than the Russian Empire.
I've read that in the middle of the 18th century the French government was already paying mothers to have more kids, just like Putin's government is doing now in Russia. They knew there was a problem. I also remember reading about this problem - the low French birth rate - in Diderot's and D'Alambert's Encyclopedia.
I can only guess what the cause of this problem was. Perhaps decadence. But then you ask yourself where did that decadence come from. I don't know.
WWII French General Weygand was rumored to be the grandson of Metternich. One of the Flashman novels has Flashy implicated as the father.
The French would have eventually had problems keeping the Louisiana Territory. New Orleans in the natural port for much of the upper midwest and almost everything west of the Appalachians, not to mention the entire Mississippi basin. The US would eventually have gone to war over it, even without the pressure on the French from the Napoleonic Wars, and would likely win.
Reg Cæsar said...
A Muslim nose makes about as much sense as a Christian chin, or Buddhist earlobes. --anonymuslim
Oh yeah?
Oh yeah yourself. Buddhist does not equal Buddha. By this logic, all Muslims are unusually white for their ethnic group, with red hair and blue eyes. That is what Muhammad looked like.
I'm surprised only one person mentioned Prince Harry (younger of Queen Elizabeth's two grandchildren, little brother of Prince William). At least 2 girls I know who follow royal intrigue both - completely independent of the other - considered it a widely accepted fact that he's actually the son of some guy Diana was screwing around with.
When he was younger, and his hair and skin looked so much different than his brother's, it seemed like an obvious thing. But as he's gotten older, he actually looks at least a tiny bit like Charles, his (putative) father. So who knows.
An interesting question would be whether DNA testing has made women more careful. On the one hand, you'd think cheating women would be a lot more careful, knowing it's impossible to keep the truth from a guy once he gets a little suspicious. But, at the same, women who decide to cheat on their husbands/boyfriends/fiances are usually responding to lustful impulses and not thinking clearly anyway.
The following is from The Atlas of World Population History by McEvedy and Jones
You'd love Ceausescu's Romania!
By dint of the fact that about 3/4ths of blacks have 'secret' fathers, probably alot of famous blacka qualify.
Well, Julius Caesar had a lot of lady friends including Brutus Mother Servilia but Caesar was about 14 to 16 years old when Brutus was born. Upper-class girls kind of liked them older at that time but who knows. Caesar had three wives but only one daughter Julia and Cleopatria son Caesarion was probably Caesar's but Caesar was not that fertile considering all the women he was suppose to bed according to Suetonius. Read a lot on Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus.
Jessica Chastain is rumored to be Ron Howard's daughter
"Because no one would leave a country rich and powerful enough to found overseas colonies, if it was at all stable."
During the relevant period France had
1) Violent and protracted religious turmoil, which did bring some Huguenot refugees to America, though not a lot.
2) The Revolution (Robespierre, the Guillotine, terror), which was followed by 25 years of war, all ending in a defeat. The estimates of French dead in the Napoleonic wars range from 1 to 2 million.
3) The revolution of 1830.
4) The revolution of 1848.
5) The defeat by Prussia-Germany in 1871.
WWII French General Weygand was rumored to be the grandson of Metternich.
Metternich lived to be 86, which was quite an accomplishment during his era. If Weygand indeed was his grandson he inherited his genes for longevity, as he made it to either 98 or 100 (there's some dispute about the year he was born).
Peter
"Karl Malone has fathered like an entire WNBA team of illegitimate children. Also has one illegimate son in the NFL."
Used here, "an entire WNBA team" apparently means "three" - two twin girls, and one boy, all from relationships prior to his NBA career. He's acknowledged the girls, but not the boy, most likely because the boy's mother was thirteen when he got her pregnant.
It's possible he's knocked up other women during his career, but that's speculation.
Wouldnt it be great if we could trace family lineage all the way back to Julius Caesar. How cool would it be to be able to say that JC was my grandfather X 100. Those little JCs are out there somewhere.
Gaul/France was the demographic heart of Europe for most of recorded history. It was only after the Napoleonic era that French population growth stalled out while England, Germany, and Russia exploded in the back half of the 19th Century.
Some scholars even attribute France's quick defeat in 1940 to the differing leave policies of the French and German armies in WW1 (French soldiers stayed on the front while Germans went home long enough to knock up their wives.)
But France reversed the trend again after WW2, and its pro-natalist policies have given it the healthiest demographics in Europe (and no, it's not just from immigrant mothers.) By the middle of the 21st Century France is on track to overtake Germany and once again become the most populous country in western Europe.
Leonard Nimoy/ Josh Hartnett
"There's a long-standing rumor that Webster "Webb" Hubbell is Chelsea Clinton's real father. Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed to have been raped by Bill Clinton in 1978, said that afterward he told her not to worry about getting pregnant because he was sterile due to a bout of childhood mumps."
Far be it from me to suggest that Bill Clinton might lie to a woman he wanted to sleep with...
"Steve Sailer said...
France is a really, really nice piece of real estate. Why leave?"
So is California. And yet........
"But France reversed the trend again after WW2, and its pro-natalist policies have given it the healthiest demographics in Europe."
My God: Sophie Marceau, Laetitia Casta, Emmanuelle Beart - French men should have no difficulty getting in the mood. A 98-year-old French man with severe heart failure should have little trouble getting it up.
Here's another one:
Jalen Rose (member of Michigan's Fab Five who played 13 years in the NBA, and current ESPN analyst) is the son of Jimmy Walker, who played nine seasons in the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s and made two All-Star Games.
Walker had no part in Rose's upbringing—he left Rose's mother prior to the birth. Apparently, they never met in person (Walker died in 2007), though they eventually talked a few times on the phone.
In my defense I thought the WNBA played half-court two on two. Kind of like NBA Jam but half court, and without the ability of anyone on the court to actual jam a dunk.
(Yes Matthew I know Candace Parker can/could dunk.) A pregnant Candace Parker dunking would truly be about the best publicity the WNBA could ever hope to have.
As an aside all the talk about Steve Rushin reminded me that Rushin married Rebecca Lobo.
Talking about Paula Yates, Paula Yates's first and original claim to fame was to pose nude in the Reform Club for Penthouse way back in 1977, when she was an 18 year old.
For those of you who don't know the august and austere Reform Club is London' s stuffiest and most pompous 'gentleman's club' - a throw back to Victorian times, a place full elderly super annuated poliicins, diplomats, the great and the good generally, to be handed ironed copies of the Times by livered servants whilst knocking back G&T's , smoking cigars and making haw-haw noise - and famously never speaking to the other members esconced in leather winged-back armchairs.
Somehow Paula (a cute young blonde thing) and a ohotographer managed to sneak themselves in after hours and commit their act of sacrilege.
As a mere young whippersnapper of a lad back in'77 I well remember the outrage and amusement caused. Was the same year as the Sex Pistols and yet another obvious symbol of Britain's decline.
The memory of Paula's pert, young buttocks sprawled across the acerage of green leather, usually reserved for the bleached white, flabby, four-square be-pinstriped bottoms of Britain's pompouscracy still raises a smile, if nothing else.
Am I the only one with the vague notion Steve's comment section has been trending larger this last while?
The memory of Paula's pert, young buttocks sprawled across the acerage of green leather, usually reserved for the bleached white, flabby, four-square be-pinstriped bottoms of Britain's pompouscracy still raises a smile, if nothing else.
Searching for that . . . now!
Doesnt alter the fact that she was a train wreck of a person. And her daughters seem on track to crash and burn in an accelerated 21st century manner.
>I can only guess what the cause of this problem was. Perhaps decadence. But then you ask yourself where did that decadence come from. I don't know. <
It may have been that the Brits better exploited the potato, introduced from South America by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1540s or thereabouts. This surplus allowed for British and Irish population surge.
Nick South Africa
Steve, one thing you should consider in your oft repeated evaluations of scions (and fathers) of "great men" is that achieving greatness is most often a very if not extremely selfish endeavor. For someone to really hit the ball out of the park in their field, it is very often a combination of the father (or sometimes the mother) investing a lot of time in giving that child an education that progresses at his abilities rather than the abilities of the rank and file, whether that education is in sports, academics, business, or whatever field.
By necessity, that parent devotes a lot of their life to a support role and as a result will not have the time to devote to being "great" himself. He may even be a genius in terms of his training, coaching or educating ability - but this is usually forgotten.
By the same token, if the great man has kids, the longer and more intensely he focuses on making his career great, the less support he can give his children. If they become great themselves, it will often be in spite of their father and not because of him.
These undeniable environmental factors that usually go into the creation of a great man usually seem to swamp the genetic influence of the great man's genes in terms of potential in creating "great" scions.
Are you people honestly suggesting that this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mark+obama&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=u&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS503US503&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=XfkQUcykMsmT0QGP3ICAAQ&ved=0CEsQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=667#imgrc=SNMCecz7UsHVkM%3A%3Bqm12Y0U8TqrWmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F3.bp.blogspot.com%252F_hntojuBOgo0%252FSvEun_ckSkI%252FAAAAAAAAI0w%252FOeMtvId1HjQ%252Fs400%252FMarkObama%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fchinaconfidential.blogspot.com%252F2009%252F11%252Fnightmares-from-his-father-obamas-half.html%3B266%3B400
is not Obama's half brother?
Jim Morrison's dad was the commander of US Naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Not a secret per se, but I bet most hippy Doors fans don't know that.
french fertility change:
http://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/why-did-french-fertility-collapse-in-the-1800s/
a rational british woman inspired by the whole show:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft#France_and_Gilbert_Imlay
the british inflection point coincides with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_Women%27s_Property_Act_1870
If you want to go to the complete insane part of the world. Jimmy Carter is Bill Clinton's father.
http://milk.com/wall-o-shame/conspiracy.html
And Aleister Crowley was Barbara Bush's father!
http://cannonfire.blogspot.ca/2006/04/george-w-bush-barbara-bush-and.html
The Duke of Berwickwas the illigitimate son of James the 2nd of Britain and Arabella Churchill, sister to the Duke of Marlborough. Nothing unusual in that in Royal circles. However the Marlborough was the greatest general on the allied side in the War of the Spanish Succession and Berwick one of the greatest on the French side.
An opposite example us that Edward the IV, currently in the news as brother of Ruchard III was almost certainly not his father's son but that of a tall & very common bowman.
Look at Courtney Love's family history. Her mother was put up for adoption by author Paula Fox, who was put up for adoption by screenwriters Paul Fox and Elsie Fox (who was a Courtney Love-esque character herself in her day). One of those two was a blood relative of Douglas Fairbanks.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/02/04/flash-mob-mayhem-violent-groups-of-teens-leave-nyc-neighborhoods-in-disarray/
Josh:
Re: Jim Morrison
Have you read "Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation"?
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html
An oddly large percentage of early American rockers came from families with military/intelligence backgrounds.
Prince Harry is an interesting one - rumours of his bastardy have been circulating almost since he was born, and he does bear some resemblance to Hewitt, though not conclusively. But as a previous poster mentions, he does look more and more like Charles the older he gets. Also, he bears a strong resemblance to his mother's sister, so his red colouring may in fact come from his mother's side, and not Hewitt.
Eric Clapton's story isn't directly relevant to this theme, but it is interesting - not least because of the improbable surname aspect of it.
OT, but here is a nice visual of just how far the movie industry has going in trying to 'look like America' (or Los Angeles)
He wasn't particularly famous, but Winston Churchill's brother Jack was almost certainly not sired by Lord Randolph Churchill. Historians have a candidate for who his father really was but I can't remember. Their mother Jennie certainly got around. Including with the prince of Wales/Edward VII.
He has Hewitt's hair and eye colour, but almost everything else is pure Spencer (compare HRH to the current Earl of Spencer, Diana's older brother, for proof.)
"But France reversed the trend again after WW2, and its pro-natalist policies have given it the healthiest demographics in Europe"
I think most of that's down to French Muslims, just as the UKs current population surge is driven by immigrants from South Asia and Eastern Europe.
Good find, Stari! (Stari-eyed, so2speak.) Just behind Oscar and to his left you can see the bastard sons of Steve Allen and Joel Gray.
Kings certainly give birth to alot of other kings. Most be a not too demanding job that leaves time for being a good father.
Zeus was the Karl Malone of the gods. He dug the 13 year olds too.
There's a great deal of dispute over the paternity of Catherine the Great's son Paul. He looked a great deal like her lover, Count Saltykov, but he seemed to have the same mental health issues of Catherine's husband, Czar Peter III. Not very knowledgable on her, but I saw some drama which may not be true that she might not have slept with her husband or very rarely.
2/4/13, 9:19 AM
See Dinesh D'Souza's documentary "2016 Obama's America." There is an interview with Barack's Kenyan half brother. They're obviously closely related. Certain shared physical mannerisms struck me as much as the facial similarity. And I doubt Frank Marshall Davis fathered the Kenyan brother. True, a lot of the right discredited itself when they got into the birther thing or that FM Davis was his dad. Frank Marshall was just a commie and like sex with early teens, so hopefully he didn't slept with Obama.
"Anonymous said...
And Aleister Crowley was Barbara Bush's father!
A lot of people love that one, but when I looked at a picture of Marvin Pierce, Barbara's official father, she looked like him. Same tight mouth and the squint to the eyes. Nothing like the bug eyed, ovoid Crowley face. Yet one guy being interviewed insisted she looked "just like" Crowley. Well, other than having two eyes, a nose and a mouth, no, she doesn't. Maybe she's his spiritual daughter though.
People run their mouths about this stuff often seeing what they want or very superficially.
I dismiss most of these; but Prince Andrew really does look like the guy the Queen was larking around 1960, and I understand there was even some discussion about it in the government. At least Andrew still has hair.
Gianni Agnelli sure looked like JFK Jr.
http://www.vintageseekers.com/vantage-point/behind-the-wheel?image=4
Extrorodinary blend of the best of each parent--Jack & Jackie. Only a superficial (or hostile?) observer could fail to see Jack Kennedy's looks in him.
He was Jackie through the forehead, convergent brows, down the middle of the face, longer nose, sharper chin. Palate, smaller teeth. And the coloring.
He resembled JFK in the shape of the skull and the jawline. The only person who had a jawline and head shape as good as Jack Kennedy was JFK Jr. Also, the outer slant of the eyes and brows. A painter who did a portrait of JFK Jr. age 7, was struck by the resemblance of the boy to his father, and mentioned the eyebrows.
Body form, mannerisms and voice timbre were also noted by people who had been around JFK Sr.
Give it a rest already. 1960 was the one year (1957 was the other) when Jackie would never have done anything to jeopardize their marriage,and one of the few years when she didn't even want to.
I don't think anyone has mentioned the long-rumored and recently admitted paternity of minor director Michael Lindsay-Hogg by no less a person than Orson Welles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/books/review/luck-and-circumstance-by-michael-lindsay-hogg-book-review.html?_r=2&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema4&
I'm the anon who brought up the question mark over Prince Andrew's paternity.
Ive heard this rumour from two sources. Once from someone in the police. Doesnt prove anything but you can imagine, they do get to know stuff, gossip.
Once from someone, unknown to the first, with connections to Palace dressmakers.
So its basically below stairs gossip from guards and servants.
There is also no motivation to keep it secret unless the father can pay for a confidentiality agreement that is higher than the possible net present value of 18 years of child support. Child support laws have been skewed in favor of moms for years, so a current sports star, under 35, would have been born after the Supreme Court rulings that stated illegitimate kids were entitled to child support the say as children born of married parents.
One future possibility might be children conceived during the NBA All Star weekend that happened in Vegas at the same time as the Chinese New Year weekend convention.
Was Steve Sailer the love child of Arthur Jensen and a young Berkeley coed?
There's a great deal of dispute over the paternity of Catherine the Great's son Paul. He looked a great deal like her lover, Count Saltykov...
As long as he didn't look like the Count's horse...
This is hard to imagine now, but when Napoleon attacked Russia, metropolitan France had more people than the Russian Empire.
Is that really from McEvedy? Angus Maddison relied heavily (though not exclusively) on McEvedy's work in calculating historical GDP. The population figure for Russia in Maddison's data is over 50 million in 1800. It'd be surprising to see such a massive divergence for one country given that Maddison's figures otherwise closely track the numbers you provide above.
Lord Byron used to spread it around, not many of them becoming renowned for anything aside from being his descendants (let's not revisit the risible "computer programmer" one). And isn't Chuck Hagel the love child of Bob Devaney and Bea Arthur? Anyway it'd be less tedious to talk about which famous people were mysteriously not disowned by their famous parents but went on to get even famouser, such as Gen. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (in turn less famous than his son the novelist)
But France reversed the trend again after WW2, and its pro-natalist policies have given it the healthiest demographics in Europe (and no, it's not just from immigrant mothers.)
How certain are you that it's not immigrant-related? Are there any statistics? The idea that it's native Frenchmen is in line with French fertility after WWII, but from the late 70s, when the country finally dropped under 2.0, through to the mid-90s there was a slight but clear downtrend, even though fertility never dropped as disastrously low as in Germany or Italy. The timing of that downtrend's reversal - 1998 - seems a bit suspect to me, as the immigrant stock had crept up to about 10% by then, and at that level immigrants would not need an outrageously high birthrate to take the whole country up to and above replacement level (which is what has happened from 1998-2010).
re Truth & Scottie Pippen:I just SAW Scottie in my grocery store yesterday! Tony Kukoch goes to the same store. As does Jrry Krause! Ha ha . I wonder if they wrer at the deli counter and Kukoch's number is aclled first would Scttie get mad?
Someone mentioned Prince Harry being the spawn of James Hewitt and Princess Diana. Ive heard gossip that Prince Andrew is not Prince Philip's son. He doesnt exactly look like Charles, Anne & Edward. Of course that lack of resemblance may be the only source of the rumour. Who the daddy might be, Ive no idea.
It's been around for awhile. I can't recall the guy's name, but he had the exact same job to Elizabeth as Hewitt had to Diana: equerry.
All very Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Lord Porchester is supposed to be the father of Prince Andrew and Baron Plunkett the father of Prince Edward.
Harry does resemble Charles more than he used to so maybe he's not Hewitt's after all.
http://blog.unl.edu/dixon/
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