When Donna Aylmer discovered she was expecting twins in 1997, her joy knew no bounds. Yet, upon their birth, she and her husband Vince found themselves in utter disbelief. The reason? Their identical twin girls, Lucy and Maria, looked nothing alike. Lucy was born with red hair, blue eyes, and fair, freckled skin, while Maria was a beauty with brown skin, brown eyes, and dark hair.

“When the midwife handed us both to her, she was just speechless,” recalls Lucy

The twins were born in Gloucester, England, to mixed-race parents—Donna is half-Jamaican and Vince is white. The BBC notes that there is a 1 in 500 chance that twins born to multiracial couples could have different racial appearances. Lucy and Maria are fraternal twins, each conceived from a different sperm and carrying distinct genetic traits from their parents. Donna’s genes carried the possibility for both light and dark characteristics, and each twin inherited a different set