It would not make the happiest of family reunions. Barack Obama, the young, charming, anti-war presidential hopeful, is an eighth cousin of Vice-President Dick Cheney, the older, whiter, irascible warrior-politician.
The link between the two men was discovered by Lynne Cheney, the vice-president's wife, while researching her ancestry for a memoir about growing up in Wyoming.
But...... there is the little fact of what it really means to be eighth cousins. An eighth cousin is someone with whom you share a great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent.
That's seven greats.
Now to figure out how many "seven greats" grandparents you have you just use the trick of the powers of two, using your parents as 2 to the 1st power and going up from there. So the number of your "seven greats" grandparent is 2 to the 9th or.........512.
And consider Obama and Cheney each had 512 ancestors of the 9th generation.
Of course remembering Barak Obama's mother is white, it is not quite as strange as it seems...
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