Dionne Quintuplets

The Dionne Quintuplets (born May 28, 1934) are the first quintuplets known to survive their infancy. The sisters were born just outside Callander, Ontario, Canada near the village of Corbeil.

The Dionne girls were born two months premature. After four months with their family, they were made wards of the King for the next nine years under the Dionne Quintuplets' Guardianship Act, 1935. The government and those around them began to profit by making them a significant tourist attraction in Ontario.

The identical quintuplet sisters were (in order of birth):

• Yvonne Édouilda Marie Dionne — died June 23, 2001, age 67, of cancer
• Annette Lillianne Marie Dionne (Allard) — age 78 as of November 2012
• Cécile Marie Émilda Dionne (Langlois) — age 78 as of November 2012
• Émilie Marie Jeanne Dionne — died August 6, 1954, age 20, of accidental suffocation during an epileptic seizure at her convent
• Marie Reine Alma Dionne (Houle) — died February 27, 1970, age 35, of an apparent blood clot of the brain in Montreal

Émilie and Marie shared an embryonic sac (and were identical twins), Annette and Yvonne shared an embryonic sac, and it is believed that Cécile shared an embryonic sac with the miscarried sixth fetus. Each girl became emotionally the closest to whomever they shared a sac with; Cécile tended to be alone the most.

All but Émilie were/are right-handed; all but Marie have/had a counter-clockwise whorl in their hair.

Émilie had a series of seizures while she was a postulant at a convent. She had asked not to be left unattended, but the nun who was supposed to be watching her thought she was asleep and went to Mass. Emilie had another seizure, rolled onto her belly and, unable to raise her face from her pillow, accidentally suffocated.

Marie was living alone in an apartment and her sisters were worried, because they had not heard from her in several days. Her doctor, whom she was seeing at the time, went to her home and found her in bed. She had been dead for days. Her estranged husband quickly reported to the media that there had been a blood clot in her brain.