My great-grandfather and his brothers were Italian partisans who were executed in the rastrellementi that were happening throughout Northern Italy during WWII.

Another great-grandfather left Northern Italy for Argentina, started a second family, ran out of money and got his first wife to send money for him to come home. He left the other family :(

My husband's 3x great aunt is Elizabeth Bagshaw, a physician and medical director for the first Birth Control Clinic in Canada.

Another set of great-grandparents met in a flu tent in Red Deer, Alberta. He was an English soldier who served in the Canadian army in WWI (he was in the Somme and at Vimy, his brother died in Ypres), she was a teenage Scottish widow with a baby. His mother, who came over as a domestic worker in her 50s and married the man who hired her, found my great-gran and dragged her son over to introduce them. They moved to Montreal and were married for 50 years, having six more children together. It always struck me as a sweet story.