99 Fun Facts About Deaf Culture & History

What does writing 'Deaf' with a capital D signal, as opposed to a lowercase d?

A cultural identity. Lowercase deaf names the audiological condition, while capital-D Deaf marks a community with its own sign language, many of whose members see deafness as a difference, not a disability.

ASL is most closely related to the sign language of which country?

France. ASL is thought to have taken shape in the early 1800s when French Sign Language met American pupils' own signs, and it differs so much from British Sign Language that the two sets of signers can barely follow each other.

ASL emerged in the early 19th century among the pupils of which school?

The American School for the Deaf. Nobody invented ASL: linguists trace it to this school's first pupils, who pooled their home signs and village sign languages with the signs their teachers used.

Which deaf teacher co-founded North America's first permanent deaf school with Thomas Gallaudet in 1817?

Laurent Clerc. On the long Atlantic crossing the two men tutored each other: Clerc taught Gallaudet to sign, and Gallaudet taught Clerc English.

In which Connecticut city did Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet open America's first permanent deaf school in 1817?

Hartford. Local surgeon Mason Cogswell wanted schooling for his deaf daughter Alice, so he asked his young neighbour Thomas Gallaudet to go to Europe and learn how deaf children were taught.

Gallaudet University, founded to educate deaf students, is in which US city?

Washington, D.C. It stands on a former postmaster general's estate: in 1856 he gave two acres for a school after finding deaf and blind children in the city going without proper care.

Which US president signed the act that let Gallaudet confer college degrees?

Abraham Lincoln. He signed it in 1864, mid-Civil War, and the presidential link stuck: Ulysses S. Grant began signing graduates' diplomas, and the sitting president has signed every one since.

Which everyday piece of American football is said to have originated on the Gallaudet team?

The huddle. Quarterback Paul Hubbard is credited with circling his players in the 1890s so that rival deaf teams couldn't read the plays he was signing.

What was the 1988 Gallaudet protest that shut down the campus called?

Deaf President Now. Students barricaded the gates after trustees picked the only hearing finalist, Elisabeth Zinser, over two deaf candidates; within a week she had resigned and every demand was met.

Who became Gallaudet's first Deaf leader as a result of the 1988 campus shutdown?

I. King Jordan. He grew up hearing and lost his hearing at 21, when a car hit his motorcycle; days before his appointment, the board had passed him over for a hearing candidate.

The 1880 Milan Conference passed a resolution doing what?

Banning sign language in schools for the deaf. Only the American and British delegations opposed the vote, and speech-only teaching then ruled deaf classrooms for most of a century.

Which Gallaudet linguist's 1960 book Sign Language Structure established that ASL is a true language?

William Stokoe. He came to it sideways: a specialist in medieval literature, he had been hired to teach English at Gallaudet, not to study its students' signing.

On which US island did a village sign language flourish because so many residents were born deaf?

Martha's Vineyard. In the town of Chilmark about one person in 25 was deaf, so nearly everyone signed, and hearing neighbours even used it among themselves.

Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds plays the daughter in which horror film about creatures that hunt by sound?

A Quiet Place. Its big father-daughter scene was scripted as speech until Simmonds showed director John Krasinski the ASL translation, which he found far more cinematic, so the lines stayed signed.

In which country did deaf schoolchildren spontaneously create a new signed language in the late 1970s and 80s?

Nicaragua. Teachers drilling the pupils in spoken Spanish couldn't follow the signs passing between them, so in 1986 the education ministry called in American linguist Judy Kegl to work out what it was.

A soloist is said to have turned the deaf Beethoven round to see the applause at which symphony's premiere?

The Ninth. By 1824 he was almost completely deaf and shared the podium with a second conductor the players had been told to follow; legend has it contralto Caroline Unger turned him to face the cheering hall.

How did friends talk with Beethoven from 1818, once his hearing had all but gone?

By writing in conversation books. Visitors wrote their side down but Beethoven usually answered aloud, so the surviving books are a tantalisingly one-sided record of his later years.

Which author persuaded an oil tycoon to pay for Helen Keller's education?

Mark Twain. Struck by her quick mind when they met, he urged his wealthy friend Henry Rogers of Standard Oil to help, and Rogers paid for the studies that took her through Radcliffe.

Which word did Helen Keller first understand when Anne Sullivan spelled it into her palm?

Water. For weeks Sullivan had spelled 'doll' and 'mug' into her hand to no effect; then she held Helen's other hand under a gushing spout, and the idea that things have names finally clicked.

Which inventor, whose mother and wife were both deaf, championed oralism and taught at the Clarke School?

Alexander Graham Bell. In the 1880s he warned that deaf people marrying one another would breed a 'deaf variety of the human race', and blamed residential schools and deaf teachers for bringing them together.

How do Deaf audiences applaud a performer?

By waving raised hands. Visual applause swaps sound for sight: arms go up, fingers spread and wrists twist, so a performer who can't hear the ovation can see it.

How does a cochlear implant deliver sound?

By stimulating the auditory nerve. An implant does not amplify sound: it bypasses the damaged part of the ear, so what the wearer hears is unlike normal hearing and has to be learned.

Who was the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God?

Marlee Matlin. She was 21 and it was her first film; at 12 she had told Henry Winkler she wanted to act like him, and after the win she moved in with his family for more than two years.

Which political drama gave the first deaf Oscar winner the recurring role of pollster Joey Lucas?

The West Wing. Joey Lucas first turns up at the White House to complain about campaign funding; the president tells her to run for office herself, and she becomes his go-to pollster instead.

What does the title of CODA, which won Best Picture in 2022, stand for?

Child of deaf adults. The heroine is the one hearing member of a deaf fishing family, and the film's backers agreed to cast deaf actors in those roles only after one of its stars threatened to quit.

Which deaf actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the father in CODA?

Troy Kotsur. In one scene his character asks his daughter to sing for him, then rests his hands on her throat to feel the song he can't hear.

Which company paid a then-record $25 million at Sundance for CODA, the first streaming release to win Best Picture?

Apple. It outbid Amazon in an overnight bidding war held online, the 2021 festival being virtual, for a film that was itself a remake of the French hit La Famille Bélier.

For which Star Wars series did CODA's Oscar-winning actor invent the Tusken Raider sign language?

The Mandalorian. He steered clear of American Sign Language, building simple signs to suit the Tuskens' desert culture, and then put on the robes to play one of the Raiders himself.

In Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays what kind of musician losing his hearing?

A heavy-rock drummer. Ahmed spent months before the shoot learning both the drums and American Sign Language, taught by a member of New York's deaf community.

Which company staged Tony-nominated productions of Big River and Spring Awakening in ASL with voicing?

Deaf West Theatre. The Los Angeles company often splits one role between two performers: in Big River, a deaf actor signed Huck's father while a hearing actor spoke and sang him.

Nyle DiMarco, the first Deaf winner of America's Next Top Model, went on to win which other TV contest?

Dancing with the Stars. A Gallaudet maths graduate who had planned to teach, he had been modelling for barely a year when Top Model's casting team found him through his social media accounts.

Which deaf EastEnders actress won Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 as its first deaf contestant?

Rose Ayling-Ellis. Midway through one routine the music cut out and she and partner Giovanni Pernice danced on in silence, a tribute to the deaf community that one judge called the greatest thing he had seen on the show.

The first Deaflympics, then called the International Silent Games, took place in 1924 in which city?

Paris. They were the idea of Eugène Rubens-Alcais, a deaf sports official who wanted to prove deaf people were more than the outcasts society took them for; athletes came from nine European nations.

What are Deaflympics athletes forbidden to wear during warm-up and competition?

Hearing aids. External cochlear implant parts must come off too, so that nobody gains an edge from amplified sound; it is also why track races start on a light, not a pistol.

Which deaf outfielder played MLB from 1993 to 2006 and later coached at Gallaudet?

Curtis Pride. Baseball wasn't even his best sport: at 16 he played for the United States at soccer's under-16 world championship and was named one of the top youth prospects in the world.

Texas's Deaf Smith County is named after Erastus 'Deaf' Smith, who scouted for which commander at San Jacinto?

Sam Houston. Smith, deaf since a childhood illness, is credited with destroying Vince's Bridge on Houston's orders before the battle, cutting off the Mexican army's line of escape.

What two-word term do Deaf scholars use for the benefits that deafness brings to society?

Deaf Gain. It turns 'hearing loss' on its head: the Gallaudet scholars behind the term argue from ecology that, as a varied ecosystem copes better with stress, a society is stronger for its deaf members.

Which teen drama aired a 2013 episode told almost entirely in ASL, about a student uprising at a deaf school?

Switched at Birth. The episode, 'Uprising', was timed to air almost 25 years to the day after the Gallaudet student protest it echoes, and was billed as a television first.

Which body made Gallaudet a university in 1986?

Congress. Gallaudet owes its existence to federal law, so lawmakers have shaped it from the start: they incorporated the school in 1857 and gave the whole institution the Gallaudet name in 1954.

Which 18th-century priest opened the world's first free public school for the deaf?

Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée. He began by tutoring two deaf sisters who already signed to each other, then paid out of his own pocket for a school open to all, whatever a family could afford.

Gallaudet's land donor Amos Kendall grew rich as business manager to which inventor?

Samuel Morse. Kendall was mired in debts and lawsuits when Morse hired him in 1845 to turn the telegraph into a business; it made both men fortunes, and Kendall spent his on churches and the deaf school.

Gallaudet celebrates April 8, the anniversary of the act that let it grant college degrees, as what?

Charter Day. Gallaudet counts that act as its official beginning, though the small school it grew out of had opened in the 1850s, and it holds a brunch and alumni awards on the anniversary each April.

Gallaudet's deaf football team long started each play on which signal?

A drum beaten on the sideline. It was pounded so hard that the players could feel the vibrations, and the ball was snapped on whichever beat they had agreed beforehand.

NTID, the college set up in the 1960s to train deaf students for skilled careers, belongs to which university?

Rochester Institute of Technology. It won the new federal college in 1966 over rival bids from universities across the country, and the first deaf students arrived on campus two years later.

Black ASL, a distinct variety of American Sign Language, evolved mainly because of what?

Racially segregated schools. The speech-only teaching that swept white deaf schools was applied less strictly in Black ones, so their pupils kept signing, and Black ASL stayed closer in some ways to the older language.

In tactile ASL, how does a DeafBlind person read what someone is signing?

By placing hands over the signer's hands, to feel each sign's shape and movement. Many who use it have Usher syndrome: deaf from infancy, they grew up signing by sight and moved to touch as their vision faded.

Jane Fernandes, blocked from leading Gallaudet in 2006, said critics thought her what?

Not deaf enough. Born deaf, she grew up without sign language and learned ASL only at 23; protesters insisted their real complaint was her leadership, and after months of unrest the trustees withdrew the job.

The decline of America's deaf clubs is usually blamed on the rise of which technologies?

TTY and closed captioning: with text phones and captioned TV at home, the story goes, nobody needed the club. Scholar Carol Padden disputes it, noting the clubs were fading before either was common, as deaf people's working lives changed.

In American Sign Language, what does a hand held up with thumb, index finger and little finger extended mean?

I love you. The handshape fuses three fingerspelled letters, I, L and Y, into a single sign, and it has spread so far beyond the Deaf world that it now has an emoji of its own.

Which Civil War general turned president began the custom of signing every Gallaudet University diploma?

Ulysses S. Grant signed the diplomas of the college's early graduates, and every serving US president since has put a signature on each Gallaudet degree.

Which bodybuilder, who lost most of his hearing as an infant, played the title role in TV's The Incredible Hulk?

Lou Ferrigno lost 75 to 80 percent of his hearing to ear infections soon after birth, and has said that being bullied over it is what drove him to bodybuilding.

Heather Whitestone, who lost most of her hearing at 18 months, became the first deaf winner of which pageant?

Miss America 1995 was Whitestone, the reigning Miss Alabama, whose passion was ballet, the skill she had worked at hardest after her hearing loss.

Which American inventor, hard of hearing from the age of 12, believed his deafness helped him concentrate on his work?

Thomas Edison was completely deaf in one ear and barely hearing in the other, and he listened to a music player or piano by clamping his teeth on the wood to feel the sound.

Juliette Gordon Low, whose hearing was damaged by a grain of rice at her wedding, founded which American movement?

Girl Scouts began in Savannah, Georgia, in March 1912 with 18 girls; removing the rice had punctured Low's eardrum and left that ear permanently deaf.

Which British royal's mother, a Battenberg princess, was born deaf and learned to lip-read in English and German?

Prince Philip's mother stayed in Athens through the Second World War and hid a Jewish widow and her children from the Gestapo, for which Yad Vashem honoured her.

Which silent-film star studied deaf painter Granville Redmond's signing to sharpen his pantomime and gave him a studio?

Charlie Chaplin collected Redmond's paintings and sponsored him in silent acting roles, including the sculptor in City Lights.

Deaf actress Linda Bove spent three decades introducing young viewers to sign language on which PBS children's series?

Sesame Street cast Bove as a version of herself from 1971 to 2002, making her the first Deaf actress in the programme's recurring cast.

Deaf stuntwoman Kitty O'Neil drove a rocket car across Oregon's Alvord Desert in 1976 to set which women's record?

Land speed was one of several records: O'Neil, deaf since early childhood, also set a women's high-fall record by dropping 180 feet from a helicopter.

Lauren Ridloff, a deaf former teacher, played the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first deaf superhero in which film?

Eternals cast Ridloff as the superhero Makkari, a character who in the comics is a hearing man.

In which film does a music teacher played by Richard Dreyfuss struggle to connect with his deaf son Cole?

Mr. Holland's Opus earned Dreyfuss an Oscar nomination; his character fails to learn sign language properly, which opens a rift with his wife as well as his son.

Which actress won an Oscar at 16 for playing the young Helen Keller in the film The Miracle Worker?

Patty Duke was almost turned down as too old to play a seven-year-old, and she wore padding under her costume for the bruising dining-room battle scene.

Singer Mandy Harvey, who went deaf at 18, earned Simon Cowell's Golden Buzzer on which TV contest?

America's Got Talent placed Harvey fourth in 2017; she had quit music for a time after losing her hearing while studying vocal music education.

Which streaming service released Deaf U, the 2020 reality series about students at Gallaudet University?

Netflix released the series in October 2020, with deaf model and activist Nyle DiMarco among its executive producers.

Deaf lip-reader Sue Thomas, whose life inspired a 2000s TV drama, joined a surveillance team at which US agency?

The FBI put the real Thomas on an elite surveillance team for her lip-reading; in the drama she was played by deaf actress Deanne Bray.

Derrick Coleman, deaf since the age of three, won Super Bowl XLVIII as a fullback for which NFL team?

Seattle Seahawks fullback Coleman relies mainly on lip reading, and a widely praised Duracell commercial told his story a few weeks before the game.

How does profoundly deaf Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie regularly perform in order to feel the music?

Barefoot is how Glennie plays on stage and in the studio. Profoundly deaf since childhood, she performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

Which Spanish court painter was left deaf by an illness in 1793, after which his work grew darker and bleaker?

Goya's late period culminated in the Black Paintings, made in oil on the plaster walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo or House of the Deaf Man.

Which English novelist made deafblind pupil Laura Bridgman famous through his 1842 travel book American Notes?

Charles Dickens met Bridgman on his American tour, 45 years before Helen Keller began her education, and Bridgman's friend Anne Sullivan went on to teach Keller.

Which American politician was given a name sign partly based on the ASL sign for lotus flower?

Kamala Harris was assigned it on becoming vice president-elect: Kamala means lotus in Sanskrit, and the sign's three extended fingers stand for her three firsts in the office.

How are most letters of the British Sign Language manual alphabet formed, unlike those of ASL?

With two hands is the British way, and when one hand is busy a signer may fingerspell onto an imaginary second hand instead.

British Sign Language and Auslan form a language family with the sign language of which other country?

New Zealand Sign Language grew, like Auslan, out of the signing used by Deaf people in 19th-century Britain, while ASL belongs to a different family altogether.

What name is given to the pidgin used between delegates at the Deaflympics and World Federation of the Deaf meetings?

International Sign grew up among delegates from different countries, and a 1975 book listed 1,470 standard signs for it under the older name Gestuno.

In American Sign Language grammar, what do raised eyebrows held through a signed sentence typically signal?

A yes-or-no question raises the eyebrows, while questions asking who, what or where lower them: in ASL the face carries part of the grammar.

Which term did Deaf scholar Tom Humphries coin in 1975 for the belief that people who hear are superior?

Audism sat in an unpublished essay and only caught on once Harlan Lane used it, widening the word to cover the oppression of deaf people.

Which body declared 23 September an annual worldwide day celebrating sign languages, first observed in 2018?

The United Nations chose the date because the World Federation of the Deaf was established on it in 1951; the day falls inside the federation's yearly Week of the Deaf.

The World Federation of the Deaf, now based in Helsinki, was founded in 1951 in which other European capital?

Rome hosted the first World Deaf gathering under Italy's national deaf association, and the Italian Cesare Magarotto then ran the federation's secretariat until 1987.

Which colour, a worldwide symbol of sign language and Deaf culture, fills the open hand on Arnaud Balard's Deaf flag?

Turquoise fills the hand, which is outlined in yellow for light and life and set on a navy blue field standing for planet Earth and humanity.

Kata Kolok, a village sign language shared by deaf and hearing neighbours, is native to which Indonesian island?

Bali's village of Bengkala has had high rates of deafness for over seven generations, and its deaf residents have their own dance and martial arts.

Which nearly deaf astronomer sorted stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M?

Annie Jump Cannon classified around 350,000 stars by hand, more than anyone else has managed in a lifetime.

In which newly independent country did Gallaudet graduate Andrew Foster open West Africa's first school for the deaf?

Ghana was only the start: Foster, the first Deaf African American to earn a Gallaudet degree, went on to found 32 churches and mission schools in thirteen African countries.

Which hard-of-hearing 'father of the Internet', co-designer of TCP/IP, joined Gallaudet University's board in 1997?

Vint Cerf and his wife Sigrid both have hearing loss, which led him to become an advocate for accessible technology.

William 'Dummy' Hoy, the most accomplished deaf player in major league history, is credited by some with inspiring what?

Umpire gestures for safe and out are credited to Hoy only by some accounts; he also once batted against another deaf major leaguer, the pitcher Dummy Taylor.

At which women's college did Helen Keller become the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree?

Radcliffe graduated Keller in 1904, at the age of 24, as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honour society.

Which deaf nine-year-old neighbour inspired Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to devote himself to educating deaf children?

Alice Cogswell lived next door, and Gallaudet began by teaching her with pictures and letters written in the dirt before he and her father planned a proper school.

What relation was Edward Miner Gallaudet, first president of Gallaudet University, to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet?

His son Edward was hearing, but Edward's mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was born deaf; Thomas died when the boy was 14.

Which president signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which led every state to set up telephone relay services?

George H. W. Bush signed it on July 26, 1990, and its fourth title brought relay services for deaf callers to all 50 states.

At the Deaflympics, where athletes cannot be guided by sound, what sets off a track race in place of a pistol?

A starting light takes the pistol's place on the track, and football referees wave a flag where they would normally blow a whistle.

Terence Parkin, a deaf South African nicknamed the Silent Torpedo, won Olympic silver in 2000 in which sport?

Swimming took Parkin, who was born deaf, to second place in the 200m breaststroke in Sydney, and his medal hauls saw him called the Michael Phelps of the Deaflympics.

In which Ohio city was the National Association of the Deaf founded in 1880 by Deaf people themselves?

Cincinnati hosted the founding, and the association's first president, Robert P. McGregor, was himself an Ohio man.

Which former National Association of the Deaf president defends ASL in the 1913 film Preservation of the Sign Language?

George Veditz feared that oralism in schools would wipe out signing, so he turned to the new medium of film; his reel joined the National Film Registry in 2010.

Which Akron tyre company employed the deaf players of the Silents, a semi-professional football team?

Goodyear hired many deaf workers during the world wars; its Silents were a success but lost all four games against the cross-town Akron Pros, a pioneer NFL side.

Which imperial court prized deaf pages for their discretion so highly that several rulers preferred signing around them?

Ottoman sultans kept deaf pages and attendants at court for centuries; they could not overhear secret negotiations and were hard for outsiders to bribe.

Which actress became the first deaf performer to win a Tony, for the 1980 Broadway play Children of a Lesser God?

Phyllis Frelich originated the leading role in Mark Medoff's play, which also won the Tony for Best Play, and she later starred in more of his work.

Deaf sculptor Douglas Tilden's Mechanics Monument and Admission Day fountain both stand on Market Street in which city?

San Francisco and its bay are dotted with Tilden's statues; deaf from scarlet fever at four, he attended the California School for the Deaf.

Which neurologist explored sign language and Deaf history in his 1989 book Seeing Voices?

Oliver Sacks made it his fifth book, and it includes his eyewitness account of the 1988 student protest at Gallaudet University.

De'VIA, a term adopted by nine Deaf creators meeting at Gallaudet University in 1989, names a genre of what?

Visual art that sets out to show the Deaf experience took the name, short for Deaf View Image Art, just before the Deaf Way festival.

The 2014 crime drama The Tribe, told wholly in sign language with no subtitles, came from which country?

Ukraine produced it in Ukrainian Sign Language, and it won the grand prize of the Critics' Week section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike, arose in a desert community in which country?

Israel's al-Sayyid community has so many deaf members, around 4 percent, that deaf and hearing villagers commonly marry and deafness carries no stigma.

Haben Girma became the first deafblind graduate of which university's law school in 2013?

Harvard gave Girma her law degree in 2013; she studied with a digital Braille device, technology her deafblind elder brother never had in Eritrea.