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The faces of the Dionne quintuplets reflected in the glass.

The Dionne quintuplets, Marie, Emelie, Cecile, Annette and Yvonne, celebrate their first birthday in style in 1935.

The Dionne quintuplets playing with their baby brother.

In front of the convent at 52nd Street with packages for the Collins quintuplets are the Dionne quintuplets, Annette, Marie, Cecile, Yvonne, and Emilie on a New York visit.

The biggest story of the 1930s was the birth of the Dionne quintuplets in 1934.

Peaceul in death, Emilie Dionne lies in the J.H. Vanier Funeral Home in 1954. One of the world-famous quintuplets, Emilie died of a stroke at the Accueil Gay, a home for the elderly. A crowd gathered outside shortly after the death of the girl was announced.

Stan Guignard stands outside former home of Dionne quintuplets that he bought and turned into a museum.

They weighed a collective 13 pounds, 6 ounces at birth and grew up in a tourist attraction resembling both a museum and a zoo.

Everyone around them reaped the financial rewards. The lingering effects left them socially maladjusted for life.

May 28 marks the birthday of the Dionne Quintuplets, the only known set of surviving identical quintuplets in world history. Born in 1934 in northern Ontario four hours from Toronto, the Quints — all girls — were a continental sensation in the 1930s and 1940s, though the two remaining sisters largely avoid the spotlight today.

The quints were born to an impoverished French-Canadian farm family, and barely survived their first few days. Forty-seven minutes passed from the birth of the first child to the fifth. Their parents, who had already produced six children, would later have three more, bringing the family total to 14.

Almost immediately, care of the quints was controlled by Dr. Allan Dafoe, who later orchestrated much of the profiteering that quickly surrounded their upbringing.

He was hardly alone. A few days after the quints’ birth, their father, Oliva, signed a contract to display them at the Chicago World’s Fair for 23% of the profits. The parish priest, apparently joining the craze, was to receive 7%.

A day later, Oliva changed his mind and cancelled the contract, but the public relations battle was already lost. Amid public outcry, the Ontario government later stepped in and established a board of guardians to care for the infants, in part to prevent American promotion.

Meanwhile, Dafoe was instrumental in the construction of a “hospital” across the road from the Dionne farmhouse. To meet skyrocketing public interest, an observatory was eventually created outside the nursery and indoor playground. There, throngs of spectators filed past a one-way glass window, allowing a peek at the quints inside.

The scenario, sort of like a zoo enclosure, attracted 3 million visitors to northern Ontario between 1934 and 1943, despite the ongoing Depression. A kind of theme park, Quintland, sprang up around the nursery and by 1936 was a larger tourist attraction than Niagara Falls.

Souvenir shops, restaurants, campgrounds, and other recreational facilities were developed, including a large souvenir stand operated by the quints’ father that employed 25 people.

The quints became a $500 million boon to the strapped province of Ontario and were media darlings around the world. Dafoe and Oliva Dionne continued to line their pockets as well. Three Hollywood movies with the quints were produced, and tens of millions of dollars rolled in from endorsement deals.

At one point, dolls of the quintuplets outsold those of Shirley Temple. 

These endorsements helped make the Dionne Quintuplets household names across North America. But interest in the quints dwindled as they grew, and public perception of the Dionne parents rose while that of Dafoe, who was terminally ill, fell. 

Oliva Dionne eventually won back custody after a prolonged legal battle, and in November 1943, the quints moved back in with the family, this time into a new two-story brick house constructed with money from their fame. 

There, the girls were forced to do chores despite the family’s newfound wealth, and were shunned by their siblings. Sequestered from the outside world, the quints had strained relations with both parents. The quints later called the house “the saddest home we ever knew.”

As the quints reached adulthood, they continued to struggle with relationships and social skills. Three of the girls married; each union ended in divorce. The quints lived on a trust fund that was relatively small by the standards of the income generated by their 1930s' sensation.

In 1954, one quint, Emilie, died of a seizure, while a second, Marie, died in 1970 of a blood clot on the brain. Oliva Dionne passed away in 1979, followed by his wife, Elzire, seven years later. 

The remaining three quints, Annette, Cecile, and Yvonne, eventually moved into a Montreal apartment together and in 1998 won a $2.8 million judgment against the government of Ontario for the mishandling of their custody and their money. Yvonne died in 2001. 

The story of the Dionne Quintuplets is periodically revisited. In 1965, the quints published their autobiography, "We Were Five," and a second memoir was released 30 years later.

In November 1994, a two-part miniseries on the quints aired on both CBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.