A single word spelled into her hand gave a deaf-blind girl language

Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing at 19 months old and grew up with no way to connect words to meaning. At age six, her teacher Anne Sullivan spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' into one hand while pumping water over the other. Keller later described the moment as when she suddenly understood that everything has a name.

— Helen Keller, The Story of My Life — Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903
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