1968: Helen Keller dies

American educator Helen Keller dies at the age of 87. In infancy, scarlet fever left her blind, deaf, and mute. Her parents appealed to the inventor Alexander Graham Bell for help, and he referred them to a semi-blind teacher, Anne Sullivan, who taught Helen to communicate by touch. She later learned how to read using the Braille system and, in one month in 1890, how to speak. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College and gained international recognition as a writer, teacher, and lecturer. Her lecture tours took her several times around the world, and she did much to remove the stigmas and ignorance surrounding sight and hearing disorders, which historically had resulted in the committal of the blind and deaf in asylums.