3 After a hospital mix-up, two pairs of identical twins from Columbia were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins. 

You may have only seen such incidents happening in the movies, where due to a mix-up in the hospital, parents end up raising the children of other people.

In the case of these pairs of twins from Columbia, it was their life story. Two pairs of identical twins, Jorge and William and Carlos and Wilber, were raised in separate parts of Columbia as two pairs of fraternal or non-identical twins.

Their story unraveled and their life collided when one day Jorge’s colleague Laura walked into a grocery store with her friend, Janeth. To her surprise, she saw Jorge standing behind the butcher counter tending to customers.

She tried waving at him, but he didn’t respond. Laura was miffed, but Janeth told her that the guy’s name was “William.” and he was his boyfriend’s cousin. Later. Laura recounted this incident to Jorge. He laughed at the weird coincidence. Jorge did have a twin, but they were not identical.

Almost a year later, bothered by the weird coincidence, Janeth sent a photo of William to Laura and asked her to show it to Jorge. Jorge could not believe his eyes. He just kept staring at the photos. Later, Jorge told the story to Carlos and showed him the picture of William and Wilber. On the other side, William’s cousin Brian was laying out this weird, twin story for him.

While William and Jorge were born on 21 December 1988 at Materno Infantil Hospital, Carlos and Wilber were born a day later in Santander Province. Both the pairs were premature, and when Carlos fell ill, he was taken to Materno Infantil for check-up along with Wilber. It was there that the swap happened.

Though the brothers have no plans to live together, they are planning to come up with a book or sell the idea for a movie script on their lives. The identical brothers have similar characteristics, such as their cheerfulness, empathy towards others, and their sense of humor. In spite of living in two different settings, the two sets of biological twins even have similarities in their appetites. (1, 2, 3)

4 Identical twin brothers Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe were separated at infancy. One grew up as a Jew and other as a Nazi, with striking similarities.

Oskar and Jack were born on 16 January 1933 to a German Catholic mother and a Romanian Jewish father. After their parents decided to part ways, the twins were separated at the age of just six months.

Years later, they met for the first time in 21 years at a railway station in Essen, West Germany.  The most striking part of their reunion was their uncanny similarity to each other. They both were wearing similar wire-rimmed glasses, had receding hairlines, the same neat mustaches, and had a very similar clothing style.

The brothers were raised continents apart and in very different circumstances. Jack was raised by his father in Trinidad and Venezuela, before finally settling with him in San Diego in the United States. He served in the Israeli Navy and liven in a kibbutz.

Oskar, on the other hand, was raised as a Roman Catholic in a small town of Sudetenland. He grew up and joined the Hitler Youth and worked in a coal mine after the war. The brothers were a glaring example of identical twins sharing similar traits even after growing up in extremely different conditions.

It was this bizarre combination that got the twin admitted to a study of “nature versus nurture” at the University of Minnesota. The study helped the brothers in getting to know better about each other. The brothers rose to fame as a result of their surprising similarities.

In 1995, a German documentary film, Oskar and Jack, was produced based on the two brothers. Oskar died in 1997 battling lung cancer while Jack breathed his last at the age of 82. (1, 2)

5 In another case of unusual twin stories, Anais found out about her identical twin sister Samantha thanks to a YouTube video shared by her friend Kelsang Dongsar. 

Browsing through social media posts and videos is in many cases just a sheer waste of time. Although for Kelsang Dongsar, it transpired into a moment of sheer luck. He had discovered the identical twin of his friend Anais Bordier. Anaïs was adopted as an infant from South Korea and raised as an only child in Paris and Brussels.

She was, at the time, studying fashion design at Central St. Martins in London. Samantha, too, was born in South Korea and on the same day as Anais, 19 November 1987. Unlike Anais, Samantha was raised by her adopted parents in Verona, New Jersey.

In their virtual introduction through Skype, both Samantha and Anais shared pictures, birth certificates, and more. They were both startled by the similarities between them. From having the same expressions, the same haircuts, the same dislike for cooked vegetables, especially carrots, to a similar style of speaking, the sisters were indeed two peas from the same pod.

Futerman began filming every conversation, encounter, and development. She then turned all the 23,000 or so clips into the doc­umentary Twinsters, which is available for streaming on Netflix. (1, 2)

6 Born to a half-Jamaican mother and a White father, Lucy and Maria Aylmer present a striking example of bi-racial twins.  

There are identical twins who don’t look the same, but it’s unique when the twins have different skin tones and hair types. Born in 1997, Lucy and Maria have a White father and a half-Jamaican mother. Just like their looks, their personalities differ too.

Fair-complexioned and red-haired Lucy studied art and design, whereas Maria who had brown hair and a caramel complexion, studied law and psychology. The skin tone of their other three siblings ranges between Maria and Lucy.

In their mid-twenties, the twins enjoy being different as people don’t mistake them for one another like normal identical twins. In fact, these twins have to show birth certificates to prove their relationship. (1, 2)