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grandmother.
• Immediately following their birth, each baby was placed into an isolation chamber to control the oxygen, temperature and humidity around them. Four of the five babies were breech deliveries, while one arrived in the usual headfirst position. The couple did not know of any other multiple births in their family.
• Andrew Fischer, a stock clerk who earned less than $100 a week before the quintuplets were born, said after the births that he wasn't particularly worried that the size of his family was doubling. The couple later had another child.
• "I don't know how, but I'm sure my wife and I will be able to take care of them, the same as the five others," he said. The couple's older children ranged in age from 3 to 7 years old when the babies were born.
• Gifts poured in for the quintuplets and their parents, including diaper service, baby clothes, college scholarships and insurance policies for a new 17-room mansion a mile outside of Aberdeen, a town of about 25,000 people in northeast South Dakota.
• The couple, who later divorced, signed a five-year exclusive contract with a publishing house for coverage of the family in December 1963, with the bulk of that money going into a trust fund for the couple's nine girls and two boys.
• By the time the quintuplets turned 5, the Fischers had turned their back on the publicity for a more normal life for the children that included doing household chores, joining the scouts and piano and dance lessons.
• When the quintuplets turned 18, attorneys for the family were still receiving regular inquiries to interview the five each month. They were all turned down.
• It was through these efforts to keep the quintuplets guarded -- particularly by Mary Ann -- that friends and neighbors said they emerged unscathed and well adjusted.
• Jim Carrier, a former newsman for The Associated Press and The Denver Post who spent years corresponding with Mary Ann on a book project about the family that never materialized, recalled it very differently.
• "The Fischer story is really an untold story of what can be a dark side of these famous family stories," he told the AP on Tuesday.
• The nation viewed the Fischers as the all-American family living a fairytale life, but when the contracts expired and the corporate gifts disappeared, the Fischers were still left to raise 11 children.
• "They were pestered by people who wanted something, and I would say, ultimately, Mary Ann ... was largely embittered by the experience," he said.
• The AP was unable to reach any of the quintuplets or other family members for

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