Nobody could have known, not even Elzire Dionne, that she was going to give birth to quintuplets. Already a mother of five, the shock of giving birth to five more baby girls—Annette, Émilie, Yvonne, Cécile and Marie—knocked her out for two hours. “What will I do with all them babies?” she reportedly screamed.

Elzire suspected she was carrying twins, but the possibility of quintuplets didn’t cross her mind. And why would it? Doctors say that the odds of naturally occurring quintuplets is about one in 55 million, but the odds of identical quintuplets is incalculable. The Dionnes are the only identical quintuplets ever recorded and the first ever quintuplets known to survive infancy.