"I've got a history..."

My great-grandpa trained horses for Ringling Bros.Yesterday, my nephew asked for help gathering enough family history to write a ten-page college paper. I quickly piped up with the most zany pieces of family lore I could remember. How a great grandfather ran off and joined the circus. How a great aunt had been in the Ziegfield follies. How my dad worked as a sideshow freak as a kid. (They called him Lizard Boy--he had ichthyosis, a genetic skin condition.)

One of the coolest things a...