Helen Keller was eighty-seven when she died on June 1, 1968, having lived without sight or hearing since she was nineteen months old—yet becoming a world-renowned writer and lecturer! Special education for the deaf and the blind was unheard of in rural Alabama in 1880, but Helen Keller was quite a stubborn pupil! Anne (Annie) Sullivan, herself partially blind, had learned how to communicate at the Perkins School for the Blind using hand signals. She was hired by the Keller family to teach the “s

On this day in 1887, 21-year old Anne Sullivan took on a new pupil in Tuscumbia, Alabama: Helen Keller. She worked hard to teach Keller, who was blind and deaf, how to communicate. The two remained close until Sullivan’s death in 1936. 🎥 Seriously Amazing Objects: Legends | Smithsonian Channel