Old Knudsen gets a nice wee surprise everytime I stumble across someone that has put up a link to me, not wanting to offend someone unintentionally because that's not as much fun as intentional offending I try to find out where my links are and reciprocate, however some Blurker (I don't like the word lurker to describe the quiet readers and Blurker sounds like vomiting thus funnier) might have a link up and I'd never know, the same thing happened in the town of Bideford in Devon. In the 1980's some Yanks from Manteo North Carolina gave the Bideford council a plate proclaiming some form of friendship, it sat in council chambers until someone turned up 2006 with a gift of a clock to mark 25 years of twinning between the two towns, the Deputy mayor David Ratcliff said," there had been links between the towns but nothing official", then he went on to say,"bloody yanks think they can come over here with their chewing gum and nylons and twin with whoever they want".
The town having been slightly embarrassed by the whole thing didn't have a gift to give back, and did these Americans not hear of telephones or the interweb? it sounds like a case of town stalking to me, to make matters worse Bideford is officially twinned with Landivisiau in France, oh its all very dirty and sordid.
The picture is of Eng and Chang, born in Siam (Thailand) 1811 and were connected at the chest by a 5 inch long band of flesh. They went to America, Canada and Europe earning money by giving lectures and demonstrations who am I kidding? a freak show for anyone that would pay to take a look , they were so famous the term Siamese twins was then used to describe conjoined twins.
Strangely enough they settled down in North Carolina where they married two sisters of European ancestry who were not twins or connected, ah to be a fly on the wall in that bedroom, they did pretty well as the four of them had 21 kids in total wey hey .
In 1874 Chang died from a blood clot in his brain and Eng two and a half hours later from shock aged 63 , it is believed that they knew about their twinning .
