My wife and I went to see my FiL: he's 87 today. The fun fact is that he is celebrating this with his twin sister!

We were talking about the number / percentage of twins that's able to have a 87th b'day together. Surely, not a large number. But I cannot find any data on that. I guess that the UK and The Netherlands aren't that different when it comes to twins. Is there a UK number or site with data?


(Those two old timers are a source of history details). They were born in the former Dutch Indies. But were never in a Japanese concentration camp for Europeans. Simply because they look too 'Asian' (they do, yes) and the Japanese didn't want to make the mistake of arresting the local Indonesian community members.

They were born in 1937 and when they were 6 or 7 yrs old, the two of them were busy roasting nuts. A Korean 'contractor' who worked as a guard/henchman in a concentration camp passed them and stole the nuts they'd roasted. Totally angry, and not hindered by anything they followed the Korean to the camp and started complaining to the Japanse guard at the gate. A Japanese officer was called and he listened to the angry twins... (remember, 7 or so) Long story short: the Korean was brought to to the gate by two Japanese soldiers, the nuts were returned and then he was severely beaten by his Japanese chiefs...

Today they said: "We were so outraged by what the Korean did. We didn't call mom or so, we went straight after him!"

Then they followed: "After VE Day in 1945, the Indonesians wanted to be free from the Dutch colonials. And every European was a 'target'. The only way to protect us, according to the Allied command was... behind the fence of the concentration camps - with no gates. But the Brits didn't have the people to guard and protect the camps. So, the Japanese soldiers still not sent back to Japan, protected the camps."

I didn't know that!