What would happen if you login to Facebook one day and get a friend request from someone who looks exactly like you? Well maybe it is just your doppelganger but not everyone has a doppelganger or even meet their’s.
This is what happened to 19-year-olds Sharon and Melon who have been hitting news headlines lately. They met through Facebook and had numerous questions concerning their striking resemblance. It might be the first time that this happens in Kenya but are Sharon and Melon the only twins who were separated at birth?
It is possible that babies can be switched at birth especially when they are taken to the incubator. Infact, twins who were separated at birth have met after a longer time than when Sharon and Melon met. However, the Kakamega twins story is unique becausein most of the other cases the twins were adopted.
Here are some previous cases of twins who were separated at birth.
Eddy Galland, Robert Shafran, and David Kellman
Eddy, Robert and David are triplets who only came to know of each others existence at the age of 19. The reunion happened back in 1980 after one of them, Robert, noticed multiple people were calling him Eddy.
When he met Eddy, it was clear they were brothers who had been separated, they were featured in newspapers, which David saw, leading him to get in touch as well. The triplets moved into an apartment in Manhattan together and were popular around New York’s social scene, even opening a restaurant called Triplets.
A movie about them was made named ‘Three Identical Strangers’ and it went ahead to win a special jury prize for documentary storytelling at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Jim Springer and Jim Lewis
The Jim twins have a very unique story. They met when they were both 39 years after being raised in separate adoptive homes 40 miles apart. After their reunion, the twins found out that they shared a remarkable number of habits and experiences.
Both had married women named Linda, divorced, and married women named Betty; both suffered from bad headaches, smoked Salem cigarettes, drove blue Chevrolets, and had named their first sons James Alan and James Allan.
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein
A set of twins separated at birth adopted through the same agency, Paula and Elyse didn’t know they had a twin until they were 35 years old. Elyse had contacted the adoption agency looking for her birth mother when she found out about her sister.
The agency connected the two after which they jointly wrote a book about the experience of getting to know a person with 100% DNA match. They later came to learn that they had been purposely separated by a psychiatrist who was doing a study on twin separation. They even interviewed him to get more content about the book.
Samantha Futerman and Anais Bordier
Just like Sharon and Melon, Samantha and Anais came to know of each other through social media. Samantha and Anais were born in South Korea and adopted by families in the United States and France.
When Anais was living in London in 2013, she happened upon a YouTube video starring Samantha, who was an actress in Los Angeles and was amazed at how similar they looked. She investigated further, found out they shared the same birthday and were both adopted, and got in touch. The sisters released a documentary called Twinsters about the experience in 2015.
