THE greatest recorded number of children born to one mother in the world, according to the Guinness 2004 world records is 69. In 27 pregnancies, the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev of Russia gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

This was in the 17 Century. Only two of her children died at infancy. She also holds the world record for giving birth to the most sets of twins and sets of quadruplets.

Similarly, the highest medically recorded number of children born at a single birth is nine to Geraldine Brodrick of Australia. None of the children (five boys, two stillborn and four girls) lived for more than six days. This was way back in 1971.

But the most children delivered at a single birth to survive are a set of septuplets (four boys and three girls.

Their mother, Bobbie McCaughey gave birth in 1997 at the University hospital, Lowa in United State of America.

The longest interval between the births of two children to the same mother is 41 years. Elizabeth Ann Buttle of the United Kingdom produced her daughter Belinda in 1956 and rested for 41 years before giving birth to Joseph in 1997.

But among men, Guinness recorded Moulay Ismail, the last Sharifian Emperor, as the world record for fathering 525 sons, 342 daughters by 1703.