Invasion of the Identical Twins

Today In History with The Retrospectors

A boatload of Swedish identical twins, aged 11 to 80, descended into Felixstowe on 7th October, 1977 - wearing matching outfits - for a shopping trip.

The eye-catching stunt was part of a scientific project led by ship captain Sune Dahlström, a twin himself, in collaboration with the Swedish Twin Register at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and aimed to study the similarities and differences in their behaviours.

Twin studies have a long history, with dark roots in Victorian eugenics and, infamously, Nazi experiments. However, the Swedish Twin Register became a more positive force for scientific discovery, meticulously based on twin birth records from parishes across Sweden, and today holding data on nearly 100,000 pairs of twins, making it the most comprehensive collection of its kind.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly celebrate the accomplishments of the Swedish Twin Register; discover how education impacts longevity; and consider why on Earth Felixstowe, of all places, played host to this unusual event…

Further Reading:

• ‘“As twins we’re useful”’ (Karolinska Institutet, 2017): https://ki.se/en/research/popular-science-and-dialogue/spotlight-on/spotlight-on-participating-in-research/as-twins-were-useful

• ‘Seeing Double: How History Became Obsessed With Twins’ (Google Arts & Culture): https://artsandculture.google.com/story/seeing-double-how-history-became-obsessed-with-twins/XgIiH-H78-86LQ

• ‘What identical twins separated at birth teach us about genetics’ (BBC REEL, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMlJcOSRX-8

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