Helen Keller Life Events

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• 8 October 2007 - Helen Keller's Birth Place.
• 5 March 2008 -Researchers have located a rare unpublished photo of Helen Keller.

Here are a few important dates from Helen Keller's life:

• June 27, 1880 Helen Keller is born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her father, Captain Arthur Henley Keller was an officer in the Confederate Army. Her mother is Kate Adams Keller. (See photos from her birth place called Ivy Green)
  
• February 1882 After being struck by illness, at less than two years of age, Helen loses both her sight and hearing, possibly from scarlet fever.
• March 3, 1887 Anne Sullivan begins teaching Helen letters by signing into her hand ("manual sign language").
• April 5, 1887 Anne makes the "miracle" breakthrough, teaching Helen that everything has a name by spelling W-A-T-E-R into Helen's hand as water flows over her palm.
• Fall 1889 Helen goes to Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, her first formal education.
• September 1900 Helen becomes a member of the freshmen class of 1904 at Radcliffe College.
• 1902 During her Junior Year at college, Helen writes The Story of My Life.
• June 28, 1904 Helen becomes the first deaf-blind individual to earn a college degree, graduating with honors from Radcliffe.
• April 1930 Helen, Anne, and Polly Thompson travel abroad for the first time, visiting Scotland, Ireland, and England for over six months. This trip is only the beginning of Helen's travels overseas -- she would eventually visit 39 countries!
• October 20, 1936 Helen's teacher Anne Sullivan Macy dies.
• 1961 Helen suffers a series of strokes.
• 1962 The movie The Miracle Worker is released in theaters depicting Helen's Life.
  
• September 1964 President Lyndon Johnson gives Helen the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
• June 1, 1968 Helen Keller dies in her sleep just shy of her 88th birthday in her home at Arcan Ridge.
• 2003 Helen Keller was featured on the Alabama State quarter.
• 2008 A rare unpublished photo of Helen taken at the age of eight is discovered.