Today is the birthday of Ronnie and Donnie Galyon (b. 1951), the world’s oldest living pair of conjoined twins. Born in Dayton, Ohio joined from the sternum to the groin, they share a set of organs and thus cannot be separated. They were exhibited since their early childhood with Coleman Shows and others, toured Latin America for a time (when the climate grew unfriendly for freak shows domestically), and appeared with Hall and Christ toward the end of their career. They have been retired since the 1990s, apart from the occasional television appearance on shows like Jerry Springer, and documentaries on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel.
To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
To learn about silent and slapstick comedy please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
