I remember listening to a song by Cliff Edwards and wondering who he was. Apparently he was a huge star of his generation in the 20s through to the 40s. He did the voice acting for Jiminy Cricket and sold millions of records. He died penniless and unknown in a nursing home. That was someone who was forgotten within his own lifetime.

It's sad to think about but we often don't know much about our own grandparents. I learned after my Irish grandfather's death that he had served in The Parachute Regiment in the Suez canal zone conflict and he was once a lumberjack in Canada, he never told me those things when living, not even when I joined the army.

You have to do something really special to be even a footnote in history. How many Sumerian kings can you name? Who were the nobles who forced John to sign the Magna Carta?