Degrees

I learned this past weekend:

1) My maternal grandmother met Ishi. She grew up in San Francisco, and her mother took her out to the UC museum now and then. One day she met a “dark” man in a guard uniform and talked with him a little while. Looking at dates, my grandmother would have been eleven when Ishi died after his four years at the museum.

2) My paternal grandfather met John Muir. Though he grew up in Livermore he also spent time with family in Martinez, where Muir owned a ranch. They met one day at a baptism.

It's said that we're each within six degrees of separation of everyone else, even Kevin Bacon! I believe it. Being two degrees from Muir means I'm only three degrees from Teddy Roosevelt. Down another path, I can get to Abe Lincoln in five steps: my mother, her grandfather, Annie Bidwell (whom he worked for at the mansion in Chico), hence to her husband John Bidwell, and then President Lincoln, whom he surely met at the Republican Convention of 1864 (if not, Bidwell and Lincoln were both acquainted with Sherman, Grant etc., making it six).

Do these connections count over the internet? I think not. I think the acquaintence should be face to face, if even for just a minute. What think you? What interesting people can you get to, if you just happen to know the links?