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People Who've Taken Ancestry DNA Tests Explain Which Secrets They Uncovered About Their Family

Blood Ties....

People Who've Taken Ancestry DNA Tests Explain Which Secrets They Uncovered About Their Family
philm1310 from Pixabay

Be careful what you wish for, you just may get it. That is one of the wisdoms of life that people are always throwing around. It can be especially true when meeting your idols, finding your dream job and searching down blood relatives you knew nothing about.

Redditor u/VideoFork wanted to know who would be willing to give up some salacious tea about their blood tie discoveries by asking..... People who have taken an ancestry DNA test and accidentally uncovered a family secret, what was it?

It's Me!

"I am the family secret, family discovered their brother/cousin/son and his wife had 3 children and gave them all up for adoption - after matching with me through a DNA test. They were shocked to say the least, but we're all pretty close now."

_orange-soda__

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That Type of Guy

"My aunt discovered that her mother cheated on her father and she was a product of that affair, meaning she was actually only half-siblings with her 4 siblings. The rub was that my aunt's husband was married before he married her. The woman he was married to is the daughter of the man involved in the affair. So no one knew this, but my uncle got divorced and then married his ex-wife's half-sister. I guess he has a type."

Herd_That

Zulu Forever

"I was adopted and always knew I was adopted. My parents told me that I came from a family that had already had all of their kids. They lived several towns over. I was a surprise. Three years ago my wife decided to take some DNA tests. I figured what the heck? Maybe I'm part Zulu warrior. That'd be cool."

"When the tests came back, I found out I had a first cousin. They had listed a public email. I emailed them, started comparing notes, and wham! I was in for quite a surprise. First, I was not born into a traditional family. Instead, my bio mom was single. Second, I was not a late addition. I had four sisters and one brother. I was the baby, but only by a couple of years. Third, most all of them lived nearby. Finally, nobody knew I was alive!"

"My biological mom had passed. She had kept the pregnancy secret from everybody else. Before she died, she had confided in one of my bio sisters that she had a baby a long time ago, and she had put the baby up for adoption. She told nobody else."

"When my sister told the rest of the family? They didn't believe her! So when I finally looked them up, she was like 'See! All those years! I told you so! We have a baby brother!' It was an amazing experience. I had no idea what I was getting into when I sent that DNA test off."

ExistentialismFTW

The Line

"Found out I have a different father. My dad also took a DNA test at the same time and found out his father, of 52 years, was not his biological father either. As it turns out, I come from a line of b**tards."

Benevolent_Burrito

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Bad Mom

"I was given up for adoption by my bio mom and none of her family knew about me. However, i was not her first or last child. I was her second of 4 kids. My older half brother (we all have different dads. I don't know who mine is and i don't think bio mom does either) was adopted by my bio moms parents. Her whole family found out about me when i found her when i was 19 and went to visit."

"It was pretty weird. I feel like the lucky one who got out. I don't talk to my bio mom. She is not a good parent to my 2 younger brothers and i hate that she pretends to know me or be my parent."

mladyKarmaB**ch

That one time....

"Not me, but a friend never knew who his father was (mom had a weekend fling in college and never contacted the guy after) and his wife helped him use ancestry.com to try and track him down. My friend reached out and the guy was obviously surprised, but flew across the country to meet him. They have a great relationship now, the dad attended his wedding, and they try to get their families together a couple times a year or so."

djsquidnasty

What a Man....

"My FIL was married to at least 2 women at a time. Nice guy but a man wh*re, and I think he just didn't want to let each woman down when she got pregnant and/or started bringing up marriage. My MIL says that he was already married when they got married, but we also know that he has a child 3 months younger than my husband and the woman and child both go by FIL's last name (and that's NOT the woman MIL claims he was married to when he married her). So he might possibly have had 3 wives at the same time. My husband has upwards of 10 half siblings from his dad."

froglover215

You're Fired....

"My wife is adopted (but found her bio mom) and did one of the genetic tests. Someone matched with her and asked if she knew such and such a name. She found out her bio dad wasn't married to the bio mom.... it was her boss. oops."

valeyard89

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A Favor

"My male cousin did one and found a female cousin we did not know about. He reached out to her and apparently our deceased uncle was good friends with her mother. Mom wanted a baby so uncle got her pregnant simply as a sperm donor. Female cousin lived a few blocks away from my grandmother. She had met her a few times going around selling Girl Scout cookies or something. My grandmother had no idea that she was buying cookies from her granddaughter."

OrangeTree81

The 3

"On the flip side - my dad used to say my mom slept around and none of the 3 of us were his kids. Welp, thanks to the test, we know all 3 of us are!"

sparklypiggy

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Siblings...

"Not my story, but someone very close to me discovered that none of the ethnic background that they were expecting was present in the results. This person, whose father was deceased at the time, questioned their mother. The mother admitted that the person's father was not biological as they believed their entire life (they were older than 40)."

"The mother gave the name of the biological father. My friend then found the biological father, contacted him, and then discovered that they had several 1/2 siblings. The biological father was unaware he had another child and accepted my friend into his family as did the siblings." ~ galtsgulch232

Family Affairs...

"My bio-dad left his family and two daughters in Washington and married my mom in Los Angeles 5 weeks later. I found his first marriage certificate but nothing about a divorce. I'm pretty sure he was a bigamist." ~ khegiobridge

"My grandfather (mom's dad) had a second family living down the street. It was apparently an open secret and my mom and her sisters talk about their half siblings occasionally. My mom refuses to speak to us about it though, so I only have the bits and pieces mentioned here and there." ~ ladyinthemoor

DNA is WILD

"I exported my raw DNA from 23andme and threw it through promethease to find out why I have porphyria, which is supposed to be hereditary. My mom and dad are definitely my mom and dad, but neither of them have this, which means it was environmental exposure that caused it. Discovered a rare AMPD enzyme deficiency in mom, found out dad carried a recessive LUPUS gene and gave it to my sister. DNA is WILD." ~ djspacebunny

Lineage

My son is my 4th cousin. (We adopted him as an infant from an agency.) Fun to find that we are actually related!" ~ iawegian

Family GIFGiphy

Extortion

"I have an uncle that was put up for adoption. He contacted my grandma and she thought he was going to extort her (they’re well off). Turns out he’s a multi, multi millionaire on his own. They still have limited contact, though my dad has reached out and formed a relationship. Apparently they look exactly alike and have the same personality (which sounds kind of stupid now that I’m writing it out, but they’re only half-siblings)." ~ RolandDPlaneswalke

In Chicago

"A woman over in Chicago decided to find out who her real parents were. She was getting close to 60 and realized that there may not be much time left to find her father. So through the magic of ancestry she was matched to my grandfather. She seached out to him and told him who her mother was. He didn't recognize the name but dug up his little black book and lo and behold... there she was. So now I've got a new aunt!" ~ dazeyd

he's dead now...

"I found a half sister that none of my siblings or mother knew about. My dad had an affair 50 years ago (he's dead now). For us it wasn't really a surprise, we already have a half-sister from another affair but for the newly discovered one it answered a lot of questions and gave her some needed closure. We all met a few times, it was pleasant." ~ AztecWheels

Facebook Finds

"My cousin took a test and goes on and on about how she's almost completely Irish. Our grandpa was German. I'd heard from my mom as a kid that my aunt's biological father was probably her friend's father. I've looked the family up on Facebook and my aunt looks just that friend. My cousin seems to have no idea of any of this. I don't think my aunt does either." ~ jelly-8

'grandpa’

"I found out that my dad is not my biological father. Turns out the family friend I grew up calling ‘grandpa’ is. Oh yea, and he was also my mom’s bariatric surgeon. Felt weird man." ~ agrajag159

Wrong Turn Oops GIFGiphy

BOOM!!

"My dad and Aunt found out they had an older brother! Long story, my grandfather had a fling before he met my grandmother, never even knew he had a son, went and lived his life and some near 60 years later, BOOM! Ancestry test, here you go! So another really good story from this one." ~ Leighmer

The DNA discovery craze has been all the rage the past decade or so.

Everyone is running around contacting family they never knew they had.

That can be quite the Pandora's box of family secrets and scandal.The outcomes have been all over the place.

Though one of the best led to the discovery of the Golden State killer so that's a win.

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The Worst Cases Of Mass Stupidity People Have Ever Witnessed

"Reddit user AdmirableFlow asked: 'What's the most severe case of mass stupidity you've ever witnessed?'"

A group of people running through the trees in the desert
Photo by Jed Villejo

Humans seem to get swept up in group mentality and ignorance far too often.

Just because 10 of your neighbors jump off of a bridge, should you?

Celebrity fads, diet fads, Black Friday sales...

The masses love to blindly join in on the crazy.

Or the fun. it's a coin toss.

Redditor AdmirableFlow wanted to hear about group mentality that wasn't too bright, so they asked:

"What's the most severe case of mass stupidity you've ever witnessed?"

There is no greater group of followers than people who run every time Apple puts out a new product.

Same phone, just a thousand dollars more.

The Dodge

happy tom cruise GIF by South Park Giphy

"Scientology."

Supersaiajinblue

"The rich ones at the top are just in for the tax dodge. A lot of the ones below them are in it thinking they can shmooze with the rich ones at the top and become one of them some days. So yeah dumb but with a layer of greed involved."

Doright36

Bad Socials

"Before social media, I just assumed people were mostly educated. Boy was I f**king wrong."

"Not only was I wrong, but now I myself feel stupid for believing that for so long."

Vitzdam-

"Up until my early 20s I felt like I was smarter than 90% of the people around me, being generous. It seemed like so many people were just complete morons, and I had this massive smug sense of superiority feeling that I was just more intelligent (and thus better) than most people."

"As I aged, I began to realize how far I'd shoved my head up my own a** and I understood that while I might have been naturally gifted in some ways, there were others in which I was the 'idiot' and other people were capable and intelligent. I felt like a real a** for feeling so much better than others, and I felt humbled."

"And then everything since about mid-2015 happened and I've really started to wonder if maybe I was just right for the wrong reasons before..."

TypicalAd4988

Without Fail

"Maybe not the most severe, but one that everyone here has personally seen at least once in their lives. When at an airport and the gate agent says 'We're about to commence boarding. Please remain in your seats until your group has been called.' And then half the people were waiting standing up and crowding the gate in a scene of utter chaos. Every time, without fail."

-Dixieflatline

Rushed

"The great toilet paper rush at the start of COVID. There was nothing about COVID that threatened the global toilet paper supply, and yet people just started panic-buying it and artificially creating a huge shortage."

"(We would eventually realize that there was a small uptick in toilet paper sold for private use, as many people were going to the bathroom at home more than at work, but no one realized that at the time and it had nothing to do with the panic - people just started buying more because people were buying more)."

Notmiefault

Seriously?!

Skin Care Girl GIF by Lillee JeanGiphy

"Thousands of people during the pandemic thinking the vaccination made their skin magnetic. What in the actual hell."

MonParapluie

Everybody thought they were about to become a member of the X-Men with the Covid vaccines.

Still waiting on that proof.

Celebrity

"People waiting in Dealey Plaza for JFK Jr. to show up."

ggrandmaleo

"That's the first thing that popped into my mind. and they stayed there for days, didn't they? someone was interviewing people in the crowd and lots of people seemed to think other celebrities were also coming back/out of hiding. Someone was looking forward to seeing Robin Williams."

chrisgee

"You could simply declare the entire MAGA and QAnon movements to be mass stupidity and you'd not be wrong. Propaganda is a helluva drug and under-education is real. Fear and prejudice go hand-in-hand with under-education."

NbleSavage

Schemes

"Anyone who keeps getting involved in Ponzi or MLM schemes."

"For decades the public has been warned on what to watch out for to avoid these schemes, you would assume that the vast majority of people would have learned by now that these schemes are fraudulent and just can't work out. Yet somehow here we are with thousands of these companies still up and running and thriving and even more people being taken advantage of by them."

TheSameButBetter

Open Up

"My local park's playground has a push gate."

"Every time I watch grown adults stare at it for like 20 seconds then go 'I think it's locked is there another one?'"

"To which I walk up and... Push the gate open."

"What annoys me about this is they want to catch an attitude like I'm an a-hole for it."

3ao7ssv8

Challenges

ice bucket challenge news GIFGiphy

"Those public challenges that CLEARLY risk health, i.e., 'the tide pod challenge.' Next time, just let things sort themselves out on their own. We can use fewer idiots in the world."

"The ice bucket challenge was at least kind of cute and DID give ALS a lot of media attention/awareness and raised a lot of money."

LadyVaresa

I liked doing my ice bucket challenge.

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comment below.

movie set
Chris Murray on Unsplash

Easter eggs, bloopers, trivia, behind the scenes anecdotes... cinephiles live collecting them and sharing their knowledge with others.

Some trivia is well known—like Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. Other tidbits are more obscure, like Arnold Schwarzenegger was first considered for the Michael Biehn role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator.

Some stories are conspiracy theories or urban legends—like the body in the forest on The Wizard of Oz set.

But what about just film facts? The obscure ones?

Keep reading...Show less
An illuminated mansion at night
Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash

It's no secret that as a person starts to make more money, they may forget how difficult they had it when there was less money coming into their bank account.

Not only are rich people often incredibly out-of-touch with the realities of most people's lives, but what they choose to prioritize and bring into their home is often pretty bizarre, too.

Already side-eyeing, Redditor Jerswar asked:

"What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed in the home of a rich person?"

Love Can't Be Bought

"Rich grandparents had a brand new house built, had a $100,000 splash pad built for their only grandchild who has never visited them at their new house."

- wyoflyboy68

"This reminds me of when my sister built her house. She had a barrier-free ground-floor apartment built in it, so my grandmother could visit. She never did."

- P44

A Separate Hoarder's House

"I had a rich neighbor growing up who'd always invite us over for parties and always insisted on giving us gifts and leftovers. They did this with every guest."

"They were also hoarders but built a separate house to keep their crap in. It was filled with whatever they bought but never used and even never got out of the packaging it was delivered in."

"They told my mom to take a box of what she wanted, and for s**ts and giggles, she did. It was a knife collection and sharpener set."

- MUSTARDUNAVAILABLE

Unusual Art

"I was at John Waters’ house for his birthday and he has a room set up as a lifelike recreation of a meth lab (it wasn’t a real meth lab, it’s an art piece)."

"He told me that when Bill Clinton visited him the secret service agents were extremely concerned about the room."

- writeleahwrite

Weird Pet Relationships

"One client had a whole separate house on their property just for their dogs. They'd referred to it as the 'dog house,' and I was expecting like maybe a little building in the yard where they kept their toys or something, but this was a fully furnished home with king-sized beds and a huge playroom on the main floor."

"They had a full training and feeding staff to care for the dogs and everything. They lived in their own house and would come over to visit. Seemed like a weird dynamic to have with your pet..."

"One client didn't have a litterbox for the cats, their cats I guess didn't like using the boxes in the basement and they didn't want to put boxes upstairs so they put down pond liner and kitty litter across an entire room in the basement and had their housekeeper run a rake through it daily."

- daabilge

Special Needs Kitty Mystery Mansion

"As a kid back in the Mesozoic Era (I'm old), my best friend and I used to play in a converted racquetball court and lounge under the old West Coast mansion her family had lived in since its construction."

"The stairs to it were hidden behind a closet off of the abandoned servants' quarters. Halfway down the stairs was a wine cellar. A decoy as the actual wine cellar for the home was under the kitchen….. Another staircase behind a rack of dusty bottles led two stories down to our giant play area beneath this."

"At the beginning of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, my friend’s paranoid WWI vet grandfather had dug out the space over fear of Japanese (or German) invasion. Her dad made the giant room regulation designed for racquetball years later. Maybe originally squash. Not sure, but the lounge area was also glassed off above it so one could look down into the court like a gallery."

"It was really neat. Also upstairs in the living room was a wall straight out of an old mystery novel. If you pushed a spot just right, the wall opened to a hidden room. Super tiny and had a button to ring certain other rooms in the house as the home had these already to call for staff. My friend's mom said it was so if someone quickly had to hide, they could alert the household of danger."

"We used to pretend to be on Nancy Drew cases all the time... so fun."

"The family was wealthy, but despite the amazing home, they lived a completely pretentious free life. Normal cars, camping vacations, frugal living as sport."

"But they were philanthropists too, especially supporting organizations like the humane society. One thing about this family’s home was all the cats. I loved kitties but had a mother who preferred her animals well-seasoned. The family had the space so they always had, and were looking to adopt out but often didn’t, at least 20 rescue cats, many with special needs."

"I’m old, I didn’t know how to write that. Special needs kitty mystery mansion really is actually an appropriate description..."

- waltersmama

"Special needs kitty mystery mansion with hidden panic rooms and decoy wine cellars is like, the best possible fever dream."

- ConneisseurOfDanger

A Unique Viewing Experience

"In Naples, FL., I was at a house with a sensory deprivation room. Flat black walls with acoustic dampening baffles, in the middle was a coffin-like bathtub. It had speakers and a flat-screen display in the lid."

"I heard that the room cost over $100K to build."

- frank_sarno

A Christmas Village

"They had part of the house permanently decorated for Christmas and it included a fully decorated Christmas tree that was suspended upside down from the ceiling. Which was pretty awesome."

- lithecello

New Meaning to "Don't Take Your Work Home"

"My wife and I used to babysit for this wealthy couple when they went on ski trips etc."

"Except for the children's schoolbooks, there wasn't a book, magazine, or newspaper in the house."

"The man was a publisher."

- Texbadger349

The End of Laundry

"I knew someone who didn't like to do laundry so she just bought new clothes for each of her 4 kids every week. They were always high-quality or designer clothes. At the time, all her kids were 10 to 16 years old."

"What would happen if they liked an item a lot and couldn't find it again? Why not just teach the kids to do their own laundry? Why not hire a housekeeper who can do it?"

"There are so many options, other than spending thousands every month just to avoid laundry. Plus, they rarely donated it. Just bagged it up and threw it out. I never could wrap my head around it."

- coffee-jnky

Can We Be the Trivia Guy?

"I know someone who's worked for a very rich person, probably worth billions. He had more than 100 staff on site, including chefs for the staff...all while divorced and living alone. He had a 'trivia' staff member... someone hired to tell him interesting facts and stories daily. That was his only job."

"Someone else was hired to maintain his shoes. Polish, shine, the works."

"If I didn't hear it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed it."

- mambo-nr4

A Mud Room, Indeed!

​"I used to work as an exterminator, mostly pest control. This had me walking through houses from the poor to the rich."

"One day, I pulled up to a four-story mansion with more rooms than I could count."

"I spoke with the lady at the door and got started. As I sprayed, I noticed there wasn’t much furniture in the house. As I went, I made a game of counting the furniture I could find. Over 50 rooms and the whole building had 13 pieces of furniture."

"Pretty odd, but then I went into the very last room, a mud room right by the door I came into."

"I stopped as I walked in, completely shocked. A huge, full-sized (alive) adult pig stretched from one end of the room to the other, resting on the tile floor. I’m talking five or six feet stretched out across the room. Flies buzzed around its head as it stared at me."

"Suddenly, the lady (who I hadn’t seen since she let me in) said, 'Oh, don’t go in there. She doesn’t like men,' and then she walked me out, paid me, and went back inside."

- Moist-Exchange2890

His Very Own Hot Wheels Garage

"Buddy of mine has a car elevator."

"Instead of just building a bigger garage, he stores his cars stacked onto each other, like some kind of Hot Wheels accessory. It's very surreal."

- SmackEh

Make Yourself at Home

​"My friend's dad growing up was one of the top lawyers in our state. Their house was so d**n big, I got confused (lost as h**l) on all the staircases they had everywhere. They would split in a few places and lead to banisters that had different connections to different parts of the house."

"They had a room just for dishes. Her mom had a huge room for sewing and another for different crafts. They both had an office. Many guest rooms. A small kitchen in one part with a sink, coffee pot, and fridge. Their main bathroom for guests had heated floors and rainfall showers and everything. I LOVED HER SHOWER."

"Her room had a balcony and a table outside."

"They had a pool and hot tub. Horses and a barn and lots of cute barn cats."

"I was very poor and had a messed up situation in my childhood. I stayed there a lot and they would even take me for weeks in the summer because my mother was not there. They are really great people."

" They didn't give handouts or anything, I would literally scoop up horse shit and clean stalls and help with everything for those horses when I stayed. I wanted to help."

"They had a maid, but we still cleaned up after ourselves. Their kitchen was gigantic, and I always loved the fancy pasta water arm over the stove. I had so much fun cooking with her mom and us having the big dinners (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) with them."

"They were so magnificent and beyond anything I would have ever experienced without them. I got my first pair of cowboy boots from them for Christmas. Her dad bought me a plane ticket one time out of the blue because I wanted to visit my grandmother. Never forget them."

- xNinjaNoPants

So Much Wasted Food

"A very rich person I know does not eat leftover food. They will cook a feast and after, everything goes straight in the garbage no matter how much is left over."

- duckduckroosebolton

"My husband won’t eat leftovers because he thinks it will give him diarrhea. His family is preoccupied with food poisoning but doesn’t know any of the actual food safety rules."

"Oh well, more for me."

- jendet010

"My brother-in-law’s family does this but they are middle class. It’s such a waste!"

- outlawjoseymeow

An Art Enthusiast

"Not weird but a Van Gogh, just chillin' in the hallway. I took a selfie with the flash on, whoops."

- Raccoon_Expert_69

"When I did executive level IT support years back, I found a Monet dangling haphazardly on an office chair in the CEO's extra office (which was unused for storage, and had an extra desktop computer I would sometimes use for quick tasks when on that floor)."

"Another time, I was admiring a Joan Miro coffee table book in his main office, and when his assistant noticed, he showed me into a side room I didn’t realize was there, which had a mini gallery of original Miro drawings."

- spymusicspy

It's amazing what people will spend money on when they have the money to spare. It would be so interesting to see how much more a person would explore a hobby if they had the money to spend.