Ah, family histories. I descend from crazy awesome. If you've ever read the history of the O'Reilly clan, you'll know we're a bunch of nuts. I mean, our earliest ancestor won land by chopping off his hand, and won due to technicality of "First to touch the land, wins". With a sick sense of humor, our coat of arms features a bloody hand on it. Looking back, where was this kind of information when I needed it for Chaucer Day at school?
Fast forward to my grandfather, during WW2, a kamikaze crashed into his boat (I think it was a battleship), and there was near-catastrophic damage, since it cleared out much of the topside, and punctured the inside, as well as a series of fires all over the boat. In order to save the ship and it's crew, he had to order everyone to cease everything and patch things up, all in the middle of a battle; and wouldn't you know, the ship came back along with most of it's crew, and he was awarded a medal of honor (or something equally awesome).
Regarding the rest of my family, let's just say that there's almost never a dull moment around any of us, and my uncles are legends amongst the NYPD to the point that their influence even affects local police in town (where I live) to take it a little easier on any of us, provided we mention their association (apparently the local sheriff has learned alot form them as well). Of course, they're retired, but they had balls throughout their entire careers. So much, that even the rest of the clan was rather intimidated by them, they know how to get things done and crack down on wrongdoing.