50 Fun Facts About Helen Keller

In which state was Helen Keller born in 1880?

Her birthplace in Tuscumbia is now a house museum that hosts an annual Helen Keller Day.

How old was Keller when an illness left her deaf and blind?

Modern doctors think it may have been meningitis, rubella or scarlet fever.

Which two senses did Keller lose as a toddler?

She communicated with home signs until she was seven, when her teacher arrived.

Keller was the first deafblind person in the United States to do what?

She graduated in 1904 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

What was the name of the Keller family homestead where Helen was born?

Her grandfather built the main house in 1820; the pump between it and the birthplace cottage is still there.

Keller's father Arthur had served as a captain on which side in the Civil War?

He later edited the Tuscumbia North Alabamian newspaper; her maternal grandfather was a Confederate general.

Roughly how many home signs had Keller invented to communicate with her family by age seven?

She could also tell people apart by the vibration of their footsteps.

Which famous inventor advised the Kellers to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind?

Bell was working with deaf children at the time and remained a lifelong friend.

Keller's mother sought help after reading Dickens's account of which educated deafblind woman?

Dickens described Bridgman in American Notes; she had been taught at the same Perkins school Sullivan attended.

How old was Anne Sullivan when she became Keller's teacher?

She had just graduated as valedictorian from the Perkins school and was herself visually impaired.

What did Keller call March 5, 1887, the day Sullivan arrived at her house?

Sullivan began at once by spelling a word into her hand for the present she had brought.

What was the first word Sullivan spelled into Keller's hand?

Keller later broke a mug in frustration during a lesson before her breakthrough.

Which word did Keller finally understand while Sullivan ran cool liquid over her hand?

'The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!' she wrote.

Where at Ivy Green did the famous breakthrough between Keller and Sullivan take place?

The pump still stands between the main house and the cottage where Helen was born.

Which institution did Keller enter in 1900 and graduate from in 1904?

She lived in Briggs Hall and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Which Standard Oil magnate, introduced by Mark Twain, paid for Keller's education?

Twain was a devoted admirer of Keller and coined the phrase 'miracle worker' for Sullivan.

What is the Tadoma method, which Keller used to 'hear' speech?

She also read braille and, by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop, could experience music.

Whom did Anne Sullivan marry in 1905?

Macy, a Harvard instructor and critic, helped Keller with her books; the marriage broke down by 1914.

Polly Thomson, hired as Keller's housekeeper and later her constant companion, came from which country?

She had no experience with deaf or blind people when hired, and stayed until her death in 1960.

Keller secretly became engaged in her thirties to which man, nicknamed 'the fingerspelling socialist'?

The young Boston Herald reporter had been sent as her secretary; the attempted elopement was thwarted by her family.

Which dog breed did Keller introduce to America after a 1937 visit to Japan?

Her first, Kamikaze-Go, died within two months; his brother Kenzan-Go, nicknamed Go-Go, slept at the foot of her bed.

Which famously loyal Japanese dog did Keller ask about, later touching his statue at Shibuya Station?

Hachiko had waited for his dead master for about ten years.

Which political organisation did Keller join in 1909?

She backed its candidate in every presidential race he ran.

Keller was a founding member of which organisation in 1920?

She had also sent money to the NAACP in 1916, ashamed of the South's treatment of Black people.

Which radical labour union, nicknamed the Wobblies, did Keller join in 1912?

She said parliamentary socialism was 'sinking in the political bog' and wrote for the union between 1916 and 1918.

Which newspaper's editor did Keller mock as 'socially blind and deaf' for attacking her politics?

He had claimed her 'mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development'.

Which US presidential candidate did Keller support in each of his campaigns?

She was an outspoken opponent of Woodrow Wilson.

Keller met every US president from Grover Cleveland to whom?

Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

Keller's 1891 story The Frost King led to accusations of what?

An investigation upheld the charge; the Perkins director suggested she had unconsciously remembered a story read to her.

What is the title of Keller's 1903 autobiography, written while she was in college?

It became the source for the play The Miracle Worker.

Keller's 1907 article helped promote which public-health measure to prevent childhood blindness?

Only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing it at the time; the practice was swiftly adopted.

Keller doubted Shakespeare wrote his plays, favouring which alternative author?

She believed Bacon had hidden an acrostic in every play in the First Folio.

Keller's spiritual autobiography My Religion advocated the teachings of which Christian mystic?

It was later revised and reissued as Light in My Darkness.

Which president awarded Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964?

She had suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent her last years at home.

Where are Keller's ashes buried?

She lies beside her companions Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.

What was the name of Keller's home in Easton, Connecticut, where she died in 1968?

She died in her sleep at 87.

Who wrote The Miracle Worker, the play about Keller and Sullivan first broadcast on television in 1957?

Keller was enthusiastic when she heard about it, having never imagined a drama could be made of her life.

Who won an Oscar playing the young Helen Keller in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker?

At 16 she was then the youngest competitive Oscar winner ever; Anne Bancroft won Best Actress as Sullivan.

Which star did United Artists want to play Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker instead of Anne Bancroft?

Director Arthur Penn insisted on Bancroft, so the studio gave him a tight $1.3 million budget.

Which eye disease left Anne Sullivan nearly blind from the age of five?

She grew up in the Tewksbury almshouse before pleading her way into the Perkins school.

What did Sullivan argue with Keller's parents about on the very day she arrived?

She was the daughter of Irish famine immigrants; the Kellers had been part of the slaveholding elite.

Who played Keller in the short-lived 2010 Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker?

Alison Pill played Sullivan opposite her.

Which US state quarter, honouring Keller, is the only circulating American coin to feature braille?

It was issued in 2003; a bronze statue of her joined the Capitol's Statuary Hall in 2009.

Where was Keller ranked in Gallup's 1999 list of the most widely admired people of the 20th century?

Time named her one of the 100 Most Important People of the century the same year.

What happened to part of the Helen Keller Archives held in New York?

The archives are owned by the American Foundation for the Blind, for which she raised funds for decades.

What was the name of the first Akita dog given to Keller, the first of its breed in America?

He died of an infection two months after arriving; Keller was then given his brother Kenzan-Go, nicknamed Go-Go.

Keller and Sullivan appeared as themselves in which 1919 silent film about her life?

It told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.

In 2009 Alabama donated a bronze statue of Keller to which US Capitol display?

It replaced the state's 1908 statue of education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.

Which honor society did Keller join when she graduated from Radcliffe in 1904?

At 24 she became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Who narrated the Oscar-winning 1954 documentary Helen Keller in Her Story?

The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2023.