“A few hospitals will have extra babies, so if you go looking for evidence you can find it.” 
 
 In 1970, statistician Richard Udry published an analysis of a supposed baby boom reported by The New York Times nine months after a blackout had hit the city in the fall of 1965. “It’s not actually a rumor, it’s real,” said Gary Stephenson, a spokesman for Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, who said the hospital had averaged three more births per day so far in July compared with the same period last year. There were 99 additional births at Virginia Hospital Center in the months of April, May and June, although spokeswoman Maryanne Boster acknowledged that birth rates have been rising at the hospital for a few years. I think it does cause one to think,” Stephenson said, adding that a nurse at Sibley had predicted the recent uptick. Not all hospitals said they had evidence of a baby boom, however. Communications departments at Medstar Washington Hospital Center, Medstar Georgetown University Hospital and Inova Fairfax Hospital balked at the post-shutdown baby-boom claim, saying they have seen no significant rise in births. And nine months later, there you are at a hospital that seems strangely overcrowded.
– As the nation's capital languished during October's 16-day government shutdown, a nurse in Washington, DC, made a Facebook prediction: “Furlough babies????" Lo and behold nine months later, reps at Sibley Memorial Hospital, where the nurse works, say there’s been a nearly 33% increase in births over the last month, says the Washington Post, while two other area hospitals report similarly notable jumps. Anecdotal evidence seems to support the timeline, with one FDA analyst recalling the time around her new daughter’s conception as "all kind of hazy," while a Pentagon worker cops to "celebrating congressional action" with his wife. Similar booms have been positively correlated with other major events—including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and a series of East Coast hurricane warnings, notes the Post. But not everyone’s convinced: At least three other DC-area hospitals tell the Post they haven’t seen any "significant" increase, and a sociologist who spoke with McClatchy DC says that seemingly burgeoning birth rates after such events are "usually … just romantic hypotheses with nothing to support them." (Read about a massive Native American baby boom that reportedly took place 1,500 years ago.)