Cyndi Lauper

The singer, 69, enlisted the help of the PBS show's host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., to trace her family's ancestry. In the episode, Lauper learns that ...

“I feel proud to be a descendant of Christen Lauper and that he was a revolutionary and that he worked local, state to state, to get the people together and organize them. Lauper was touched to learn of her connection to the revolution. In 1909, she traveled from Palermo to New York City and paid for members of her family to join her. Gates goes to explain that in the early 160s, Switzerland’s troubled economy caused grain prices to plummet. The government executed over 40 of the peasant ringleaders and punished others. "He was involved in a seminal event in his nation's history."