The Twin-Buzz: World News about Multiples | Leap Day birthdays gave Palm brothers a taste of celebrity

Leap Day "Twins" 4 years apart. Their birthdays gave Palm brothers a taste of celebrity

By John Kelly, Published: February 28

Mike and Herb Palm could never get their mother, Lilian, to explain exactly how she did it, how she managed to give birth to Mike on Feb. 29, 1948, and then to Herb exactly four years later, on Feb. 29, 1952, a rare set of consecutive Leap Year siblings, both born at Doctors Hospital in Washington.

Well, they know how she did it — it involved their father, Mike Sr. — but the timing . . . 

“Here’s something I’ve always wondered,” Herb said to me the other day. “My mother would never answer, but I always wondered if it was a C-section, which might be the only way you could get this to work. My mom took... 

(John Kelly/THE WASHINGTON POST) Herb Palm poses with a story from a 1956 Washington Post in Washington, DC on February 28, 2012. The story shows Herb, brother Mark and sister Patti. Herb and Mark were both born on Feb. 29.