Twintastic / ctrl+c; ctrl+v

No! You are not seeing double in Twinsburg, Ohio. Holding the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Largest Annual Gathering of Twins in the World” Twins Days is a festival for twins (and other multiples) which takes place on the first full weekend in August. This year they celebrate their 40th Festival! Every year the festival has a theme and this year it is “Twins Days: Times 2 Remember” looking back at the past 40 festivals and looking forward to the future and many more.

So, how did the celebration come up? It was inspired by a pair of enterprising 19th-century twins, Moses and Aaron Wilcox who bought about 4,000 acres of land and offered to donate six acres for a town square and $20 towards a new school, on one condition: that the place drop its dull old name, Millsville, and become Twinsburg. In 1976, the town was celebrating the United States’ bicentennial and decided to throw a party the Wilcoxes would have appreciated. The event was made annual looking at the turn up of Twins.

Now about 1,140 sets of multiples including people from Nigeria, Brazil, Australia, Ghana, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Germany, Japan, China and India gather. The festival has developed its own traditions over the years and attracts many members of the scientific community who conduct twin studies.

Only 2% of the world’s population are twins, and only 0.2% are identical twins.

Here’s a handpicked bunch of twins who’ve made it to the headlines.

Dylan Thomas Sprouse and Cole Mitchell Sprouse are American actors. They are twins and are collectively referred to as Dylan and Cole Sprouse or the Sprouse brothers, usually abbreviated as Sprouse Bros.
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Fuller Olsen, also known as the Olsen Twins collectively, are American actresses and fashion designers.
Tashi Malik and Nungshi Malik from Harayana, India are Guinness record holders as World’s First siblings and first twins to scale the Seven Summits.

Tashi and Nungshi Malik doing endurance trek at the foothills of Himalayas

Highcrest Middle School have two dozens of twins in a single grade.

Roger Federer, former world no.1 tennis player, married to former Women's Tennis Association player Mirka Vavrinec have identical twin girls, Myla Rose and Charlene Riva. The Federers had another set of twins, this time boys whom they named Leo and Lennart.

Sometimes miracles come in pairs, they are called twins. Learn some fun facts about the bundle of joy.

The incidence of twin types and genders are oddly symmetrical. One third of all twins born are identical. One third are same sex fraternal and one third are male/female fraternal. Of the identical twins, half are male/male and half are female/female. Of the same sex fraternal, half are male/male and half are female/female.
Up to 22 percent of twins are left-handed. In the non-twin population the number is just under 10 percent.
Identical twins exhibit almost identical brain wave patterns.
Twins and multiples have been know to develop their own 'language' that only they understand. This is known as cryptophasia or idioglossia.
Nigeria has the highest rates of multiples with more identical twins than fraternal while China has one of the lowest with multiple births occurring one in 300 births. ( How ironical ? )
In 1853, a peasant named Kirilow was presented to the empress of Russia as he had been married twice and his wives gave birth to 72 children including 4 sets of quads. 8 sets of triplets and 8 sets of twins !
William Shakespeare was the father of boy/girl twins. Hamnet & Judith and he also wrote about twins in The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night.
Several sets of twins were born on opposite sides of the midnight millennium - one baby born on December 31, 1999, and the other on January 1, 2000.