ZoomPast is a free web application to explore genealogy of famous people. You can use this application to discover and view family tree of famous people with detailed information about parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, spouse, children, grandchildren, etc. The database of this application consists of genealogy of tons of famous people including British Royal Family, Barack Obama, Abraham, Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Charles Darwin, George Washington, Elizabeth II Windsor, Michelle Obama, and more.
The application’s interface is super simple and you can simply use your mouse wheel to zoom in and zoom out the entire family tree of any person. It even allows you to view the Biography of any person from any genealogy and see the birth & death year of grandparents to grandchildren of that particular person. Unlike other genealogy software, this one allows you to explore the public genealogy of famous people, apart from creating your own genealogy.
How to Explore Genealogy of Famous People with ZoomPast:
Step 1: Go to the homepage of ZoomPast and start exploring the genealogy of famous people instantly. However, if you want to create and submit your own genealogy then you need to sign up first. After you sign in, you will see different tabs on the Home screen named, My Trees, Friends trees, Public Trees, Create News Tree, etc.
Step 2: To explore the genealogy of famous people, click the “Public Trees” option and a new window will appear with names of some famous people like Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, etc. You can click on any name to open up the entire genealogy of that particular person.
Step 3: Let’s say, you’ve selected Barack Obama, then the entire (available) family tree of Barack Obama will open up as shown below. To see the parents, blood relatives, and ancestors of Obama, you can simply use your mouse wheel and zoom in the genealogy canvas.
Step 4: You can also zoom the canvas by keeping the Barack Obama node of the family tree at the center to view the birth/death year of his grandfather, father, mother, himself, spouse, and children. The more you zoom the canvas the more details you can see related to his family.
Step 5: When you zoom any node in any genealogy, you will see 3 different options named, Wiki, Bio, and Root at the bottom of the birth/death year section. When you click the “Wiki” option, it will pen up a popup with the information of that person on Wikipedia. Whereas, clicking the “Bio” option will show you few details about the person such as birth date, birth location, and other details if available. You can use the “Root” option to zoom out the entire genealogy to normal.
Step 6: Another useful feature of this application is that if you don’t want to explore the genealogy by zooming the canvas, then you can simply search for any person on the same genealogy you’re viewing currently. For this, type the name of the person in the search bar at the top-left corner and you’ll see all the suggestions related to the keyword. You can click on any name to directly go to the node and view the genealogy by keeping that person at the center of the family tree.
Step 7: In the same manner, you can select any famous person and explore his/her genealogy. It also has the option to create and submit your own genealogy. To do this, click the “Create New Tree” and give your genealogy a name. After that, you’ll be able to edit and connect each node to form the entire family tree. Click on any empty node ad you can start entering details of any person as shown below.
My Final Verdict:
ZoomPast is quite an interesting web application to explore the genealogy of famous people like Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, John F. Kennedy, and many more. No Rocket Science required, as you can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and zoom out the genealogy of any person. In addition to that, you can also create and submit your own genealogy.
