It’s All Relative

boxersHere are some alliterative topics for discussion: travel, time and twins.

There’s time travel: the great soprano Nellie Melba died in Australia on Feb. 23, 1931, but her death was reported in some New York newspapers on the 22nd.

There’s twin travel: Bulgarian composer Pantcho Vladigerov was born in Switzerland but his twin brother had arrived the day before in Bulgaria. Their mother did not care for the Bulgarian medical system so she hopped a train with one twin and hours later de-trained in Switzerland to give birth to the second.

And now…Twin Time Travel! Earlier this month a woman in North Carolina gave birth to a boy at 1:32 a.m. Thirty-four minutes later his twin sister arrived. But wait! Daylight Saving Time ended at 2:00 a.m. The second twin was actually born at 1:06 a.m. which makes her older. Or does it? In the famous last words of the mother, “We’ll let them work that out between themselves.”