Births: 54,000,000 to 1

The odds were 54,000,000 to 1, but it happened—and not once, but twice in a single week. The odds-off event: quintuplets. The first set, five boys, was born Sept. 7 in Maracaibo, Venezuela; the second, four girls and a boy, arrived seven days later in Aberdeen, South Dakota. At week's end mothers and quints were doing fine.

Not Even a Yelp. Last July, when X rays disclosed that she was carrying a fivesome, Venezuela's Inés Maria Cuervo, 34, fainted dead away. Once revived, the mother-to-be, the common-law wife of an oilfield worker, was...