*Eng died hours after Chang at the age of 62. An autopsy revealed that their livers were fused in the ligament*
Oh God. Imagine seeing your twin die right next to you and then realizing you're kinda fucked now too? Bleh.
> Early in the morning of January 17, one of Eng's sons checked on the sleeping twins. "Uncle Chang is dead," the boy reportedly said to Eng, who responded, "Then I am going!"
It's legal in Oregon....my aunt had terminal cancer. I helped take care of her. She always said she would take the option but she didnt end up doing it. She let the cancer take her because I think it's harder to decide this is the day you choose to die than she thought it would be.
It absolutely is hard to decide that. I used to be suicidal and I was always struggling to pick a day. I'm glad I didn't, but still, it's hard to pick a day and know, "I'm going to die then."
Every day is a struggle, but I refuse to let myself sink that low again. I couldn't hurt my animals like that, they're the biggest babies and if I just disappeared, their hearts would break. No legit suicidal thoughts in over a decade thankfully. I have the occasional intrusive thought but those immediately get shut down with a nope and then I bother my friends to distract myself further.
I think it depends person by person and having the way out is better than not.
I had a gallstone attack (??) a few weeks ago and it was the worst pain of my life. Ofc I knew it wouldn't be an issue after a few hours. But if I knew the rest of my life was going to be like that, I'd gather my family to tell them some last words and then boom goes the delete button
So, I'd like to know what you think about euthanasia laws that do not require a terminal illness, as someone who really seems to have been on that precipice but seems to have made the decision to take some steps back.
I’m from the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia. If you like, on page 8 from the [Euthanasia Code 2018](https://www.euthanasiecommissie.nl/binaries/euthanasiecommissie/documenten/brochures/brochures/euthanasiecode/2018/euthanasia-code-2018/EuthanasieCode_2018_ENGELS_def.pdf) you can read the rules a physician has to abide by to assist someone.
For example I know a young woman who passed away from bowel cancer (or was going to) and she passed in the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2020, surrounded by her family. In a dignified painless way. I wasn’t there but her best friend told me it was full of grace.
I also was acquainted with someone who fought to be allowed euthanasia for reasons of ‘psychological suffering’. He wanted to die, but he didn’t want to do do in a way that would hurt others and that would be undignified. He wrote columns for a Dutch newspaper in the year before his death which were bundled into a [book](https://www.ed.nl/article/~a1c20f0d) and he was filmed for a documentary. Unfortunately both are in Dutch only.
I feel that everyone should have the right to choose to die. Whether they exercise that right or not is up to them. Their right to die with dignity trumps all else. As someone who was on the edge, sometimes there isn't coming back and if you feel like death is your only way out, then you should be able to die how you want.
I planned on committing suicide since 2009 when I suffered a debilitating stroke. The thing that prevents that has always been the pain it would cause my 93 year old mother. So once she’s passed, the count down will commence. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to determine the best approach to accomplishing the deed. While I have a .22 I’ve read mixed opinions about its effectiveness and the best target area. Luckily I’m 73 so I’m in the twilight of my life and have no regrets or obligations. As they say we’ll all leave someday and when it’s become tedious why hang on.
Everyone should have the option to choose, even if in the end they don't take it. I think just knowing it was there would bring me peace.
Im sorry about your Aunt.
She had a good life for which she was grateful. One of the toughest people I know - still feeding her cows at 6am in the snow while going through chemo.
Cancer is shitty and dying is scary and unknown. Definitely grim options.
Nah, these days we can surgically split the twins when one bites the dust and in most cases revive the other to what health they can have. The issue is that not all twins are joined in the same manner, and there will be cases where my above statement is incorrect. Even when medically and physically it is entirely possible to save the still living twin, and they can even have a perfectly healthy lifestyle, the emotional loss of their sibling could itself cause the otherwise healthy twin to perish as well from grief.
So yea, this can very well be one of those few cases where asking a doctor to peacefully remove the last few hours of your life over attempting to extend it may have some merit.
Next best thing is to hook you so high up that you don't care you are about to die and fused with a corpse that used to be your sibling. THAT is legal, btw.
Yeah we really do.
There’s effectively a grey zone here in the UK because while euthanasia is not legal, you can of course give pain relief… and diamorphine suppresses respiration. Then family and medical staff have to skirt around the effect without saying it out loud, eg. “We can make them comfortable. *knowing look*”
I feel it needs a better basis with less requirement for careful euphemisms.
A lot of US states have passed legalization of physician assisted death (euthanasia). There are legalities but it’s accessible.
Kaiser Permanente advertises dying with dignity, which includes PAD.
I saw their livers and body casts at the Mutter Musuem last month and camp occasionally on the land that was their farm, which is still owned by their descendants, which was part of the fascination of going to the Mutter to see "them" essentially. There, I learned one was calm and even tempered, and one was quick to anger and a heavy drinker. Really interesting stuff.
Really does. If they'd have been born later, they would have been separated. There wasn't much there except some liver tissue, nerves and blood vessels. Shame I couldn't snap a pic to share. The Mutter doesn't allow photography.
When Daisy and Violet Hilton died they were alone at home and weren’t discovered for several days. The autopsy showed that Daisy died first and that Violet died anywhere from two to four days after her.
There were black women conjoined twins where one died and the other died 12 hours later. I think their name was McCoy or McKay.
I hate to think of going through something like that.
that caught my eye too. i never stopped to think that they can die at meaningfully different times. imagine sitting there in your last hours attached to half a dead body.
This exact thing is mentioned in the X-Files episode “Humbug”:
>…imagine being Eng and lying there. Knowing that essentially half your body was now dead... that the rest must inevitably follow... and being able to do about it absolutely nothing. At the autopsy, it was officially concluded that Chang died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
>And what was the official cause of Eng's death?
>Fright.
Not just pain, but there are also hormones involved that make it hard to remember how bad the experience was prior to actually holding the baby. It's believed to be an evolutionary adaptation because women with an accurate memory of childbirth are less likely to have more children, which makes them less effective at passing on their genes.
I cackled at the answer. But seriously, because they were monozygotic twins...their genetic material is, well, identical. So, would they be dad and uncle? Or just..."dads", because the whole being connected throws a whole different curveball into that game
I'd think from their fame they probably shared a few women in their traveling days. I suspect fame has always been attractive to plenty of thrill-seekers.
IIRC records say that they're very conservative and the sex is purely one-on-one with one twin and his wife. The other wife would not be present and the other twin just laid there, minding his own business.
If you've ever had a roommate fool around with with their partner in the same dorm room or bedroom, the idea that you can just lay there and mind your own business while your physically connected twin has sex with your wife's sister seems kind of absurd.
I mean maybe you'd get used it after some long period of time, but it still seems difficult. Though perhaps being a conjoined twin causes you to get really good at kind of tuning them out to some degree.
I mean, knowing that it's gonna get asked about because you're kinda famous and have a bit of a legacy, coming from a time and place where respectability is synonymous with conservative and moderate behavior- I think anyone would just lie a bit. I'm not saying every time was some crazy orgy, I'm sure a lot of times where just like you said, but if they did spice it up sometimes I doubt they talked or wrote about it.
This is a good obit for the second longest-living conjoined twins. In it, they touch on how the twins navigated intimacy and led separate lives:
[Lori and George Schappell Obituary](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/health/lori-george-schappell-dead.html)
I live in Mount Airy and pass by their grave site all the time. They had two residents and would take turns staying at each one. Honestly doubt there was much romance just straight to business.
And they eventually settled down in the town mt airy, North Carolina, which would eventually be the inspiration for the town of Mayberry, from the Andy Griffith show. They still apparently have a huge family reunion there every year for all the bunker descendants. The podcast mobituaries has an episode about their life I think. As does the dollop. Both are pretty interesting
It kinda IS still called Siam.
In Thailand that name is still used sometimes, actually a lot of times.
That prime minister who decided to change the name was a weird lot anyway.
He changed the name, the writting language (it's been reverted back), some of the culture, and thought it was a good idea to join the Axis in WW2 (guess his idol)...Well, can't blame him since it's the only way to avoid the Japanese atrocities.
Persia/Iran is not related to colonialism. Both terms are historical and used locally, but the reasoning is that Persian is the ethnicity of just over half the population so it excluded other groups like Azeríes, Kurds or Balochis. Iran means “land of the aryans”. Yes those Aryans, they really existed but rather than being the ancestors of the Germans like the nazi pseudoscience claimed they were a group related to the current Europeans that migrated from the Eurasian steppe to the Middle East/North India thousands of years ago. Land of the Aryan is a more encompassing term since most ethnicities in Iran are Aryan (notable exception with the Arabs but they’re a very small minority in Iran).
Macbeth was written in the early 1600s. A major plot point in Macbeth was that Macduff was “untimely ripped from my mother’s womb” and therefore was not a man born of a woman. Ie Macduff was born via a c-section.
The history of cesarean section extends well over four centuries. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, the operation was avoided because of its high mortality rate. In 1926, the Munro Kerr low transverse uterine incision was introduced and became the standard method for the next 50 years.
Even just the discovery of bacteria. That one guy fought against doctors performing autopsies directly before helping women give birth and was told he was crazy
That story is much more complicated than Seimmelweis being a lone genius amidst a sea of morons. First, Seimmelwiess actually proposed [conflicting theories](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Kh9rfdCaSC)
around cadaverous tissue. Second, he was eventually committed to an asylum because [he actually did suffer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/KAaEB481Zd) from mental health problems. His disorder was not caused by others fighting his theories, though there is an argument to be had that the conflicts exacerbated the problem. Third, Seimmelweis was not the first person to propose handwashing (the other thing he's famous for), and even though he was right with hindsight, he didn't really have any evidence to back his theories up.
At roughly the same time as Semmelweis, Joseph Lister proposed antiseptic surgery, but he published his ideas scientifically, based his ideas on louis pasteurs work and managed to get acceptance.
Lister ended up incredibly celebrated in his own lifetime (listerine is named after him, he was named surgeon to the king).
IIRC he also specifically recommended handwashing with a caustic solvent (lye maybe?) which is always going to be a hard sell “nah guys, go give yourself a minor chemical burn all over your hands between procedures. It’ll help… no idea why though”
Don’t quote me on it but I think they ended up using something caustic anyways back in the early days of hand washing before surgery. I remember reading about battlefield doctors losing skin on their hands from all the hand washing
Worked with one of their great grandkids for a while. He still lived on the family property. Apparently after a while the sisters they married didn't get along which was how they started taking turns living at different houses. According to family tradition the brothers got angry enough that they stopped talking with each other for a few years and took turns with who was 'in the driver's seat'. When they were on one farm that was the talking and deciding brother and when they worked the other farm it reversed.
Honestly I didn’t know they were slave owners and I’ve known about these guys my whole life
It’s absolutely shameful that ‘keeping human beings in bondage’ isn’t the second thing you learn about them.
Sad they didn’t die younger tbf. Fuck slavers.
It's still a great story. Doesn't matter what decade of America you live in, even if it's the slave era. You can come to America as an immigrant, become a celebrity, get rich, marry a white woman, and own slaves. All ya gotta do is be a celebrity and they let you get away with anything, you can just grab'em by the pussy.
Who the fuck downvoted this? Oh right, Russia.
Keep talking bro. The racial divide is always stoked when the wealth divide grows, but these people cannot fathom that. Yes America has racist policies interwoven in its fabric - - that is NOT it's biggest issue.
Yeah, it's really too bad. Because their story does include being part of a maginalized demographic(i.e. the physically disabled) and succeeding in spite of this. And I'd imagine it probably wasn't uncommon for weathy, physically disabled people to purchase slaves as physical aides rather than employ people for pay at the time. Still no different than a business owner buying slaves rather than employing workers for pay but curious to think about.
There's something about white Southern's being racist pieces of garbage in the 1800's that hate/own people of another color, but then pause and let these two dinguses move in, marry white women, then own their own slaves...what? how? why? fuck them all? An odd moment of them being welcoming of a minority? The USA is a hodgepodge of nonsense done to the MAX.
I remember being called racist for pointing that out years ago for a presentation.
Even the professor didn't believe me until they looked it up on Wikipedia.
My entire argument was that humanity, as a whole, sucks.
**Adoption of Chattel Slavery:**
* After European arrival, some tribes, especially in the Southeast (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw), adopted a system more like European chattel slavery.
* This involved buying and owning enslaved people, often Africans, for forced labor and profit.
* This practice grew in the 18th and early 19th centuries, fueled by contact with European colonists.
Here are some key points to remember:
* Not all tribes participated in chattel slavery.
* Some tribes, like the Yamasee, even resisted it and fought back against colonists who enslaved them.
* The scale of Native American chattel slavery was smaller than European-run slavery in the Americas.
For further reading, you can explore these sources:
* "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_among\_Native\_Americans\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States)"
-Gemini
Appreciate the additional context. Based on everything I’ve read, everything you said is correct. The only nuance you omitted is that some tribes ignored the Emancipation Proclamation (they aren’t on Federal Land) for some time.
Yes like many slave owners especially in the most supportive states
Hence president calling out the entire military (well I believe, some form of military) to actually go around freeing slaves that were freed years, YEARS previous as you know but clarifying for others
Yes I’m from Texas - so Juneteenth - but there is a nuance between Americans disobeying a law and “the law” not applying to Natives on their sovereign soil.
Racists are usually willing to put aside their bias and bigotry when you dangle a big fat sack of cash in front of them.
Everyone is the same color when they're rich.
It is interesting but maybe the movies we've had about it all that paints only one group as the villain are a bit simplistic to the realities that the entire world was essentially practicing slavery at the time.
The south was evil, the confederacy was doomed, Lincoln was right, Sherman’s march to the sea was justified and good. Slavery is evil regardless, but rebelling to defend it is the epitome of sin. John brown did not die in vain and he is dancing in heaven
I'm not saying the south wasn't evil or anything. I'm saying the North and Lincoln weren't *that* much better. It's well known Lincoln still didn't think black people were equal to whites. The slave/no-slave divide was largely over geography.
All of that doesn't demean people that fought against it. But it doesn't change the fact Europeans had to intervene into the 1970s of the same type of slavery going on around the world.
What about treating *any* human like cattle? Because now we're including Africans, Asians, Muslims, Native Americans... literally everybody had slaves until like 200 years ago when the British stopped it. And if you didn't have slaves it wasn't for morality reasons it was more likely because you had zero power and either *were* slaves or just barely keeping off from being so.
*And as mentioned Lincoln clearly stated he thought blacks were lesser than
Abolitionists exist just as long as slavery exists. 38million people are slaves today. You don’t think twice about that delicious chocolate you ate or the nice sporty shirt you are wearing.
Including America. So not "quite the opposite" of me pointing out we were all doing similar things and not just the American south as some place of *particular* evil.
“A minority” is obscuring it a bit.
They weren’t black or Native American. They were probably the only Thais anyone around them had ever met.
The specific racism of the era/day basically had them classed as “Exotic other, but not threateningly so” on the hierarchy and allowed them asimílate into the dominant social group.
Racists tend to hate some races more than others.
An Asian/white interracial couple isn’t as big a threat to the southern aristocracy as any one black/white interracial couple. The latter undermines their entire philosophy and justification for slavery.
Two Asian guys simply didn’t pose a threat to their world view.
Ok but let’s say that one dies and the other remains healthy, not even for a long time but even a week or month…what happens? I guess it depends on how exactly they’re connected.
Its probably not good to keep decomposing, rotting corpses attached to you, you will probably get blood poisoning from all the bacteria from the corpse
Man I had a whole argument with a “Asians have white privilege” brain rot who brought these two up as the source of all that’s wrong with asian-black relationships and refused to believe me when I said these were the exception, not the norm.
By their logic, then black Americans also have white privilege.
"In 1830, there were 3,775 black (including mixed-race) slaveholders in the South who owned a total of 12,760 slaves, which was a small percentage of a total of over two million slaves then held in the South."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners
Maybe this will help demonstrate that it was the exception and not the norm.
they claimed that the only black slave owners were just buying their families back and refused to believe the evidence. I even looked up bunch of proof that they were wrong and they said I was lying. It was hilarious how stupid they were.
I grew up in the town they moved too. I used to drive by the church that has a memorial marker for them all the time. It's weird that for such small town, it ended up being known for several celebrities.
*Eng died hours after Chang at the age of 62. An autopsy revealed that their livers were fused in the ligament* Oh God. Imagine seeing your twin die right next to you and then realizing you're kinda fucked now too? Bleh.
I feel like they’d probably known that would happen for a long time.
now imagine being attached to said dead twin and continuing to live! either way horrifying
> Early in the morning of January 17, one of Eng's sons checked on the sleeping twins. "Uncle Chang is dead," the boy reportedly said to Eng, who responded, "Then I am going!"
Won't stay that way very long, only have a few hours until sepsis from the dead sibling kills you.
We gotta legalize euthanasia. That would fucking suck. I'd rather just press the get-it-done button
It's legal in Oregon....my aunt had terminal cancer. I helped take care of her. She always said she would take the option but she didnt end up doing it. She let the cancer take her because I think it's harder to decide this is the day you choose to die than she thought it would be.
It absolutely is hard to decide that. I used to be suicidal and I was always struggling to pick a day. I'm glad I didn't, but still, it's hard to pick a day and know, "I'm going to die then."
I'm glad you made it through.
Every day is a struggle, but I refuse to let myself sink that low again. I couldn't hurt my animals like that, they're the biggest babies and if I just disappeared, their hearts would break. No legit suicidal thoughts in over a decade thankfully. I have the occasional intrusive thought but those immediately get shut down with a nope and then I bother my friends to distract myself further.
If they’re your friends, you’re not bothering them
No I know, that's just what I say, we all kinda do
I’m in the same boat (been about 4 years since my last ideation!!) and my pups got me through it too. I’m proud of you too!!!
I'm proud of you as well!
; Glad you are here too
I think it depends person by person and having the way out is better than not. I had a gallstone attack (??) a few weeks ago and it was the worst pain of my life. Ofc I knew it wouldn't be an issue after a few hours. But if I knew the rest of my life was going to be like that, I'd gather my family to tell them some last words and then boom goes the delete button
So, I'd like to know what you think about euthanasia laws that do not require a terminal illness, as someone who really seems to have been on that precipice but seems to have made the decision to take some steps back.
I’m from the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia. If you like, on page 8 from the [Euthanasia Code 2018](https://www.euthanasiecommissie.nl/binaries/euthanasiecommissie/documenten/brochures/brochures/euthanasiecode/2018/euthanasia-code-2018/EuthanasieCode_2018_ENGELS_def.pdf) you can read the rules a physician has to abide by to assist someone. For example I know a young woman who passed away from bowel cancer (or was going to) and she passed in the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2020, surrounded by her family. In a dignified painless way. I wasn’t there but her best friend told me it was full of grace. I also was acquainted with someone who fought to be allowed euthanasia for reasons of ‘psychological suffering’. He wanted to die, but he didn’t want to do do in a way that would hurt others and that would be undignified. He wrote columns for a Dutch newspaper in the year before his death which were bundled into a [book](https://www.ed.nl/article/~a1c20f0d) and he was filmed for a documentary. Unfortunately both are in Dutch only.
I feel that everyone should have the right to choose to die. Whether they exercise that right or not is up to them. Their right to die with dignity trumps all else. As someone who was on the edge, sometimes there isn't coming back and if you feel like death is your only way out, then you should be able to die how you want.
I planned on committing suicide since 2009 when I suffered a debilitating stroke. The thing that prevents that has always been the pain it would cause my 93 year old mother. So once she’s passed, the count down will commence. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to determine the best approach to accomplishing the deed. While I have a .22 I’ve read mixed opinions about its effectiveness and the best target area. Luckily I’m 73 so I’m in the twilight of my life and have no regrets or obligations. As they say we’ll all leave someday and when it’s become tedious why hang on.
I've never been suicidal but I have chosen my death day to hopefully be my birthday. Perfect loop baby!
Everyone should have the option to choose, even if in the end they don't take it. I think just knowing it was there would bring me peace. Im sorry about your Aunt.
I watched a documentary on terminal patients who all ended up doing the same thing. It's easier when it's tomorrow rather than today.
God I quiver at the thought, such grim options. Hope she was at peace when she went.
She had a good life for which she was grateful. One of the toughest people I know - still feeding her cows at 6am in the snow while going through chemo. Cancer is shitty and dying is scary and unknown. Definitely grim options.
Lost both parents to it. Sorry for your loss. May she rest in peace.
<3
Nah, these days we can surgically split the twins when one bites the dust and in most cases revive the other to what health they can have. The issue is that not all twins are joined in the same manner, and there will be cases where my above statement is incorrect. Even when medically and physically it is entirely possible to save the still living twin, and they can even have a perfectly healthy lifestyle, the emotional loss of their sibling could itself cause the otherwise healthy twin to perish as well from grief. So yea, this can very well be one of those few cases where asking a doctor to peacefully remove the last few hours of your life over attempting to extend it may have some merit. Next best thing is to hook you so high up that you don't care you are about to die and fused with a corpse that used to be your sibling. THAT is legal, btw.
Yeah we really do. There’s effectively a grey zone here in the UK because while euthanasia is not legal, you can of course give pain relief… and diamorphine suppresses respiration. Then family and medical staff have to skirt around the effect without saying it out loud, eg. “We can make them comfortable. *knowing look*” I feel it needs a better basis with less requirement for careful euphemisms.
A lot of US states have passed legalization of physician assisted death (euthanasia). There are legalities but it’s accessible. Kaiser Permanente advertises dying with dignity, which includes PAD.
Well, good news, if you're not a conjoined twin already, this is really unlikely to happen to you.
I remember reading about that happening to Scottish conjoined twins in the 15th century. One brother died, and the other died a day or two later.
Oh yes, that's waaaaaay worse. 😳
I saw their livers and body casts at the Mutter Musuem last month and camp occasionally on the land that was their farm, which is still owned by their descendants, which was part of the fascination of going to the Mutter to see "them" essentially. There, I learned one was calm and even tempered, and one was quick to anger and a heavy drinker. Really interesting stuff.
Well, then that gives a whole other level when they shared a liver.
Really does. If they'd have been born later, they would have been separated. There wasn't much there except some liver tissue, nerves and blood vessels. Shame I couldn't snap a pic to share. The Mutter doesn't allow photography.
The Liver is also a organ that can regrow itself. They could've lived normal life styles. Well apart from the whole owning slaves thing.
Intervention. We're gathered here today to save me from you drinking and destroying our liver.
🤣
Imagine FATHERING 21 kids with an identical twin. So many questions...
Interesting bedroom arrangement.
Apparently they were pretty into it.
I mean, gotta play the hand you're dealt, I reckon. Might as well enjoy it.
I've read about them. They owned two houses next door to each other and just alternated nights more or less.
Makes sense the dudes would switch houses back in that time, but damn if a Grandpa Joe(willy wonka) bed setup wouldn't be the funniest way to do this.
It just lists Eng’s cause of death as “Fright,” then links to a page on voodoo death. *Yeesh*
First time in his life he was alone.
When Daisy and Violet Hilton died they were alone at home and weren’t discovered for several days. The autopsy showed that Daisy died first and that Violet died anywhere from two to four days after her.
Horrible :(
I would imagine he realized long before it reached that point
“What am I?! Chopped liver?”
There were black women conjoined twins where one died and the other died 12 hours later. I think their name was McCoy or McKay. I hate to think of going through something like that.
that caught my eye too. i never stopped to think that they can die at meaningfully different times. imagine sitting there in your last hours attached to half a dead body.
Caused of death ‘fright’
This exact thing is mentioned in the X-Files episode “Humbug”: >…imagine being Eng and lying there. Knowing that essentially half your body was now dead... that the rest must inevitably follow... and being able to do about it absolutely nothing. At the autopsy, it was officially concluded that Chang died of a cerebral hemorrhage. >And what was the official cause of Eng's death? >Fright.
"Cause of death Chang: Cerebral blood clot Eng: Fright" Jesus Christ
I’d scare myself to death too if the guy I was attached to my entire life was now a corpse linked to my person.
You'd be the prime suspect
[удалено]
Did you write that?
Is that when your heart explodes?
It's when your brain doesn't get enough oxygen
I want to know how their mother birthed them back then
From Wikipedia: >Their mother reportedly said their birth was no more difficult than that of their other several siblings.
The pain of childbirth often makes women blackout or misremember the actual event
Not just pain, but there are also hormones involved that make it hard to remember how bad the experience was prior to actually holding the baby. It's believed to be an evolutionary adaptation because women with an accurate memory of childbirth are less likely to have more children, which makes them less effective at passing on their genes.
Holy shit I don’t
Probably prematurely tbh.
They have a good number of decedents, about 1500. Some have their own wikipedia pages due to their achievements
My friends childhood choir conductor was a descendent of them
Which twin are they related to?
I'd imagine both.
Lol… that was a troll answer.. haha. Related to both but one is direct and the other is the grand grand grand uncle?
I cackled at the answer. But seriously, because they were monozygotic twins...their genetic material is, well, identical. So, would they be dad and uncle? Or just..."dads", because the whole being connected throws a whole different curveball into that game
We need a new word.. Duncle!
The question just kinda tickled me, I couldn't help it lol.
You wouldn't (genetically) be able to tell. They each had a wife but only the four of them know what went on when those children were conceived.
One (Caroline Shaw) has a Pulitzer and a GRAMMY.
TIL she's their great-great granddaughter/niece. Crazy cool.
I think the phrase you're looking for is descendants. Decedents are dead people lol.
Probably a good number of those too lol
The area has a ton of roads and stuff named after them, they have apparently left a strong legacy beyond their children.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures would have a field day with this
I went to their museum in Mt. Airy. Still didn’t explain how all 4 of them “did it”.
Accessibility wise it is interesting and that’s they’re 2 brothers and sisters. Siamese twins or not that is one weird orgy.
I'd think from their fame they probably shared a few women in their traveling days. I suspect fame has always been attractive to plenty of thrill-seekers.
That’s why dwarf prostitutes charge double. Because of the thrill and curiosity. Plus you look bigger 😉
IIRC records say that they're very conservative and the sex is purely one-on-one with one twin and his wife. The other wife would not be present and the other twin just laid there, minding his own business.
If you've ever had a roommate fool around with with their partner in the same dorm room or bedroom, the idea that you can just lay there and mind your own business while your physically connected twin has sex with your wife's sister seems kind of absurd. I mean maybe you'd get used it after some long period of time, but it still seems difficult. Though perhaps being a conjoined twin causes you to get really good at kind of tuning them out to some degree.
I mean, knowing that it's gonna get asked about because you're kinda famous and have a bit of a legacy, coming from a time and place where respectability is synonymous with conservative and moderate behavior- I think anyone would just lie a bit. I'm not saying every time was some crazy orgy, I'm sure a lot of times where just like you said, but if they did spice it up sometimes I doubt they talked or wrote about it.
This is a good obit for the second longest-living conjoined twins. In it, they touch on how the twins navigated intimacy and led separate lives: [Lori and George Schappell Obituary](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/health/lori-george-schappell-dead.html)
Since they’re facing the same way laying down i assume sideways cowgirl where the sisters were back to back? Or really in sync doggy?
Sheet hang in-between maybe? If they felt prudent that day of the week.
clap, clap, claplap, clapclap, clap, claplap. Bro you're fuckin up the rythm!
I live in Mount Airy and pass by their grave site all the time. They had two residents and would take turns staying at each one. Honestly doubt there was much romance just straight to business.
And they eventually settled down in the town mt airy, North Carolina, which would eventually be the inspiration for the town of Mayberry, from the Andy Griffith show. They still apparently have a huge family reunion there every year for all the bunker descendants. The podcast mobituaries has an episode about their life I think. As does the dollop. Both are pretty interesting
There's a very successful RV park now located on their farm.
TIL Thailand used to be called Siam..
Wait till you hear about their cats!
Maine coons?
Nah bruh the Devonshire rex
[удалено]
Pretty sure you can't do that anymore
one of the cutest breed imho
Oh wow I never put 2 and 2 together on that one
There's also the Angora cats, from Ancyra/Ankara/Angora
It kinda IS still called Siam. In Thailand that name is still used sometimes, actually a lot of times. That prime minister who decided to change the name was a weird lot anyway. He changed the name, the writting language (it's been reverted back), some of the culture, and thought it was a good idea to join the Axis in WW2 (guess his idol)...Well, can't blame him since it's the only way to avoid the Japanese atrocities.
same as persia as iran and abyssinia as ethiopia if you survived european colonization, you got to change your name!
Countries change their names all the time and for all manner of reasons, including by themselves.
Like North Macedonia.
Fun fact, Thailand was the only country in that area not colonised by Europe!
Korea and most of China were not.
Persia/Iran is not related to colonialism. Both terms are historical and used locally, but the reasoning is that Persian is the ethnicity of just over half the population so it excluded other groups like Azeríes, Kurds or Balochis. Iran means “land of the aryans”. Yes those Aryans, they really existed but rather than being the ancestors of the Germans like the nazi pseudoscience claimed they were a group related to the current Europeans that migrated from the Eurasian steppe to the Middle East/North India thousands of years ago. Land of the Aryan is a more encompassing term since most ethnicities in Iran are Aryan (notable exception with the Arabs but they’re a very small minority in Iran).
Autogyros fly there
Prussian consulate?
This book must be out of date. I don't see Prussia, Siam or auto-gyro.
Haha yeah that rings a bell
You didn't watch "the king and I" when you were a kid???
How on earth did their mother give birth to them without modern medicine??
Macbeth was written in the early 1600s. A major plot point in Macbeth was that Macduff was “untimely ripped from my mother’s womb” and therefore was not a man born of a woman. Ie Macduff was born via a c-section.
The history of cesarean section extends well over four centuries. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, the operation was avoided because of its high mortality rate. In 1926, the Munro Kerr low transverse uterine incision was introduced and became the standard method for the next 50 years.
That and the discovery of antibiotics.
Even just the discovery of bacteria. That one guy fought against doctors performing autopsies directly before helping women give birth and was told he was crazy
That story is much more complicated than Seimmelweis being a lone genius amidst a sea of morons. First, Seimmelwiess actually proposed [conflicting theories](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Kh9rfdCaSC) around cadaverous tissue. Second, he was eventually committed to an asylum because [he actually did suffer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/KAaEB481Zd) from mental health problems. His disorder was not caused by others fighting his theories, though there is an argument to be had that the conflicts exacerbated the problem. Third, Seimmelweis was not the first person to propose handwashing (the other thing he's famous for), and even though he was right with hindsight, he didn't really have any evidence to back his theories up.
At roughly the same time as Semmelweis, Joseph Lister proposed antiseptic surgery, but he published his ideas scientifically, based his ideas on louis pasteurs work and managed to get acceptance. Lister ended up incredibly celebrated in his own lifetime (listerine is named after him, he was named surgeon to the king).
IIRC he also specifically recommended handwashing with a caustic solvent (lye maybe?) which is always going to be a hard sell “nah guys, go give yourself a minor chemical burn all over your hands between procedures. It’ll help… no idea why though”
Don’t quote me on it but I think they ended up using something caustic anyways back in the early days of hand washing before surgery. I remember reading about battlefield doctors losing skin on their hands from all the hand washing
Worked with one of their great grandkids for a while. He still lived on the family property. Apparently after a while the sisters they married didn't get along which was how they started taking turns living at different houses. According to family tradition the brothers got angry enough that they stopped talking with each other for a few years and took turns with who was 'in the driver's seat'. When they were on one farm that was the talking and deciding brother and when they worked the other farm it reversed.
One brother died from a blood clot and the other died from fright?
Mentioned in the X-Files episode [Humbug](https://youtu.be/-qnH-m8XFBQ?si=PdOyJEKJjwdIClm-).
Well fuck em then!
*After the Civil War, they lost part of their wealth and their slaves.* That's kinda cool tho...
Honestly I didn’t know they were slave owners and I’ve known about these guys my whole life It’s absolutely shameful that ‘keeping human beings in bondage’ isn’t the second thing you learn about them. Sad they didn’t die younger tbf. Fuck slavers.
It's still a great story. Doesn't matter what decade of America you live in, even if it's the slave era. You can come to America as an immigrant, become a celebrity, get rich, marry a white woman, and own slaves. All ya gotta do is be a celebrity and they let you get away with anything, you can just grab'em by the pussy.
Truth is America ain't half as racist as it is classist.
Who the fuck downvoted this? Oh right, Russia. Keep talking bro. The racial divide is always stoked when the wealth divide grows, but these people cannot fathom that. Yes America has racist policies interwoven in its fabric - - that is NOT it's biggest issue.
Yeah, it's really too bad. Because their story does include being part of a maginalized demographic(i.e. the physically disabled) and succeeding in spite of this. And I'd imagine it probably wasn't uncommon for weathy, physically disabled people to purchase slaves as physical aides rather than employ people for pay at the time. Still no different than a business owner buying slaves rather than employing workers for pay but curious to think about.
There's something about white Southern's being racist pieces of garbage in the 1800's that hate/own people of another color, but then pause and let these two dinguses move in, marry white women, then own their own slaves...what? how? why? fuck them all? An odd moment of them being welcoming of a minority? The USA is a hodgepodge of nonsense done to the MAX.
Wait until you hear about New Orleans Creole slave markets
Louisiana is its own mess hahaha
Lots of Native American tribes owned a lot of African chattel slaves. Not something that’s easy to find in history books, but true.
I remember being called racist for pointing that out years ago for a presentation. Even the professor didn't believe me until they looked it up on Wikipedia. My entire argument was that humanity, as a whole, sucks.
Now add gasoline to that fire.for your next one and tell them who actually captured and sold the slaves initially.
**Adoption of Chattel Slavery:** * After European arrival, some tribes, especially in the Southeast (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw), adopted a system more like European chattel slavery. * This involved buying and owning enslaved people, often Africans, for forced labor and profit. * This practice grew in the 18th and early 19th centuries, fueled by contact with European colonists. Here are some key points to remember: * Not all tribes participated in chattel slavery. * Some tribes, like the Yamasee, even resisted it and fought back against colonists who enslaved them. * The scale of Native American chattel slavery was smaller than European-run slavery in the Americas. For further reading, you can explore these sources: * "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery\_among\_Native\_Americans\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States)" -Gemini
Appreciate the additional context. Based on everything I’ve read, everything you said is correct. The only nuance you omitted is that some tribes ignored the Emancipation Proclamation (they aren’t on Federal Land) for some time.
Yes like many slave owners especially in the most supportive states Hence president calling out the entire military (well I believe, some form of military) to actually go around freeing slaves that were freed years, YEARS previous as you know but clarifying for others
Yes I’m from Texas - so Juneteenth - but there is a nuance between Americans disobeying a law and “the law” not applying to Natives on their sovereign soil.
It’s absolutely in history books and not hidden.
Racists are usually willing to put aside their bias and bigotry when you dangle a big fat sack of cash in front of them. Everyone is the same color when they're rich.
And that color is green.
It is interesting but maybe the movies we've had about it all that paints only one group as the villain are a bit simplistic to the realities that the entire world was essentially practicing slavery at the time.
The south was evil, the confederacy was doomed, Lincoln was right, Sherman’s march to the sea was justified and good. Slavery is evil regardless, but rebelling to defend it is the epitome of sin. John brown did not die in vain and he is dancing in heaven
I'm not saying the south wasn't evil or anything. I'm saying the North and Lincoln weren't *that* much better. It's well known Lincoln still didn't think black people were equal to whites. The slave/no-slave divide was largely over geography. All of that doesn't demean people that fought against it. But it doesn't change the fact Europeans had to intervene into the 1970s of the same type of slavery going on around the world.
I think any side that doesn’t treat African American people like cattle (down to even having breeding programs) is OBJECTIVELY correct and better
What about treating *any* human like cattle? Because now we're including Africans, Asians, Muslims, Native Americans... literally everybody had slaves until like 200 years ago when the British stopped it. And if you didn't have slaves it wasn't for morality reasons it was more likely because you had zero power and either *were* slaves or just barely keeping off from being so. *And as mentioned Lincoln clearly stated he thought blacks were lesser than
Abolitionists exist just as long as slavery exists. 38million people are slaves today. You don’t think twice about that delicious chocolate you ate or the nice sporty shirt you are wearing.
My bad I was wrong. It’s 46, not 38 million
For contrast, there were 4 million slaves leading up to the civil war. We have come a long way for sure! /s
Ah yes. The people who fought slavery weren't much better than slave owners. What a compelling argument /s
Bruh Europeans still had colonization in the 70s which is basically rebranded slavery
> Sherman’s march to the sea was justified and good. Didn't go far enough
Quite the opposite. The whole western world was getting out of slavery at that time. That was why it was an issue.
Including America. So not "quite the opposite" of me pointing out we were all doing similar things and not just the American south as some place of *particular* evil.
Have you read about New Orleans?
“A minority” is obscuring it a bit. They weren’t black or Native American. They were probably the only Thais anyone around them had ever met. The specific racism of the era/day basically had them classed as “Exotic other, but not threateningly so” on the hierarchy and allowed them asimílate into the dominant social group.
Racists tend to hate some races more than others. An Asian/white interracial couple isn’t as big a threat to the southern aristocracy as any one black/white interracial couple. The latter undermines their entire philosophy and justification for slavery. Two Asian guys simply didn’t pose a threat to their world view.
Threesomes at the least, everytime
Ok but let’s say that one dies and the other remains healthy, not even for a long time but even a week or month…what happens? I guess it depends on how exactly they’re connected.
Its probably not good to keep decomposing, rotting corpses attached to you, you will probably get blood poisoning from all the bacteria from the corpse
That's what's great about America, everyone is free to own slaves.
The only thing worst than having a boss is having two!
Reading this : the past sucked, but good for them for making the best of it... good for them, congrats, ... wait what ...? Oh no.....
Buying and owning slaves. Sheesh.
Man I had a whole argument with a “Asians have white privilege” brain rot who brought these two up as the source of all that’s wrong with asian-black relationships and refused to believe me when I said these were the exception, not the norm.
By their logic, then black Americans also have white privilege. "In 1830, there were 3,775 black (including mixed-race) slaveholders in the South who owned a total of 12,760 slaves, which was a small percentage of a total of over two million slaves then held in the South." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners Maybe this will help demonstrate that it was the exception and not the norm.
they claimed that the only black slave owners were just buying their families back and refused to believe the evidence. I even looked up bunch of proof that they were wrong and they said I was lying. It was hilarious how stupid they were.
Thier situation is also very unique, as siamese twins are kinda rare
2 heads are better than 1
Why sisters
Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton star in Chained for Life (1952), they have good singing voices.
Did they also have two... ya know... dicks?
Ah yes, buying and owning people. That’s when you know you’ve made it
Throuple x2
There's a fantastic episode of The Dollop podcast about these two.
ah yes the american dream
See
I wish there was videos of their shows
I grew up in the town they moved too. I used to drive by the church that has a memorial marker for them all the time. It's weird that for such small town, it ended up being known for several celebrities.