Are you curious to learn some weird and wonderful facts about Helen Keller?
If so, excellent! You are in exactly the right place my friend…
It’s time to chat about Helen Keller facts.
Let’s dive right in…
Facts about Helen Keller
1 – Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880.
2 – She lost her sight and hearing as an infant due to illness. She was deaf and blind from the age of 19 months old.
3 – She went to college at Radcliffe College in 1909.
4 – In 1938 she became the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University.
5 – Her most famous work is The Story of My Life which was published in 1904, when Helen Keller was 24 years old.
The Story of My Life became an international bestseller and made her famous throughout America. Her autobiography is one of the most well-known books ever written about a woman’s struggles for independence and equality.
The book has been translated into more than fifty languages and is one of the most widely read books in history.
More Facts about Helen Keller
6 – She died on June 1, 1968 at the age of 87.
7 – At the age of 7, she learned to communicate with her teacher Anne Sullivan using a manual alphabet.
8 – Her first words were spelled out as “w-a-t-e-r” because they were the only word she knew how to spell at that time.
9 – On September 25th, 1964 she died in New York City at the age of 87.
10 – In 1920 she became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
More Facts about Helen Keller
10 – In 1920 she became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
11 – In 1922 she received an honorary doctorate degree from Oxford University in England.
12 – Helen Keller learned to read using braille, which is a system of reading that uses raised dots on paper for the blind or visually impaired.
13 – She also used other senses to understand her surroundings, such as touching objects with her hands and feeling vibrations from sound waves.
14 – In 1887, Helen became the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree in history from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University).
15 – After graduating, she became an activist who campaigned on behalf of people with disabilities.
More Facts About Helen Keller
16 – Despite being deaf-blind, Helen Keller learned to speak and read braille before attending college.
17 – Her other works include The World I Live In and Out of the Dark Room.
18 – The American Foundation for the Blind awarded her their gold medal for distinguished achievement in blindness.
19 – In 1920 she was elected to serve as president of the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) which fought to get women voting rights.
20 – After reading about a famous French educator for the deaf-blind, Abbe de l’Epee, Kate took Helen to him at age 6 and he taught her how to read using finger spelling.
More Facts About Helen Keller
21 – In 1887 Anne helped teach Helen braille so that she could read independently from then on out; they also used sign language which allowed them to communicate without others understanding what they were saying.
22 – The movie “The Miracle Worker” starring Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller tells the story of how she learned to communicate with people even though she was blind and deaf from a very young age.
23 – It has been translated into more than 70 languages since it first aired on TV in 1957.
24 – The American Foundation for the Blind awards an annual award named after her called “Helen Keller Prize.”
25 – Helen Keller is widely known for being deafblind but also had a love for literature and writing poetry.
In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt awarded her with an honorary Master’s Degree from Columbia University for being such an inspiration to people everywhere despite all odds against her success.
Helen Keller has been called “The Woman Who Wrote Her Way into History” because she wrote twelve books in total including The Story of My Life which was published in 1903.
She died on June 1st 1968 at the age of 87 years old but her legacy lives on today.
