Tuesday 11 February 2014

Famous Blind persons "Sight impaired"



Helen Keller - (1880 - 1968) - Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 -
June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was
the first deaf/blind
person to graduate from college. She was not born blind and deaf; it
was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an
illness described
by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain",
which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The
illness did not last
for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. Keller
went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered
as an advocate
for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes.

Stevie Wonder - (born Steveland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, name
later changed to Steveland Hardaway Morris), is an American
singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist,
and record producer. Blind from infancy, Wonder signed with Motown
Records as a pre-adolescent at age twelve, and continues to perform
and record for the
label to this day. It is thought that he received excessive oxygen in
his incubator which led to retinopathy of prematurity, a destructive
ocular disorder
affecting the retina, characterized by abnormal growth of blood
vessels, scarring, and sometimes retinal detachment.
http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/fb_share/3626200

·        
Franklin Delano Roosevelt - (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945)
Franklin was the 32nd President of the United States of America and
played a big role during
World War II. Roosevelt eventually aided the poor and un-employed of
America and restored order at various times during his Presidency. He
was also the
only President to ever get elected 4 years in a row mostly because of
his help for the recovery of the economy. It has been said that
Roosevelt had several
disabilities including vision impairment.

Harriet Tubman - (c. 1820 - 10 March 1913) Harriet Tubman was a slave
throughout her youth, being treated as an animal until she eventually
escaped captivity.
When she had reached Canada she did not stay to enjoy her freedom. She
returned to the lands and brought hundreds of black slaves back to
safety, saving
them from slavery by escaping from what they then called The
Underground Railroad. After a severe wound to the head, which was
inflicted by a slave owner
before her escape, she became victim to vision impairment and
seizures. Which did not keep her from tossing her fears aside and to
keep fighting for the
freedom of her people.

Louis Braille - (January 4, 1809 - January 6, 1852) Louis Braille
became blind after he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with his
father's awl. He
later became an inventor and designed braille writing, which enables
blind people to read through feeling a series of organized bumps
representing letters.
This concept was beneficial to all blind people from around the world
and is commonly used even today. If it were not for Louis Braille's
blindness he
may not have invented this method of reading and no other blind person
could have enjoyed a story or been able to comprehend important
paperwork.

Alec Templeton - (July 4, 1909, March 28, 1963) was a satirist and
pianist who had moved from Wales to the United States where he played
with several orchestras,
eventually making it to his first radio performances on the Rudy
Vallee Show, The Chase and Sanbourn Hour,The Magic Key and Kraft Music
Hall. The way he
would memorize his scripts before the show was by asking someone to
read them 20 times in a row while he would listen. He was blind from
birth but it did
not stop him to doing what he wanted to do in the end.

Galileo Galilei - (15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642) Galileo Galilei
was a Tuscan (Italian) astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and
philosopher being
greatly responsible for the scientific revolution. Some of his
accomplishments include improvements to the telescope, accelerated
motion and astronomical
observations. Galileo was the first to discover the four largest
satellites of Jupiter which were named the Galilean moons in his
honor. Galileo had also
improved compass design and eventually opposed the geocentric view.
His sight started to deteriorate at the age of 68 years old and
eventually leaded to
complete blindness.

Andrea Bocelli - (born 22 September 1958) Andrea Bocelli had become
blind at the age of 12 years old following a football accident in
which he was hit in
the head. At 6 years old Bocelli was taking piano lessons before also
learning the saxophone and the flute. His family would always ask him
to sing, bocelli
once said "I don't think a singer decides to sing, it is the others
who choose that you sing by their reactions". Bocelli has sung with
other great singers
such as Pavarotti and has only been further admired due to his
blindness.

John Milton - (December 9, 1608 - November 8, 1674)John Milton was a
civil servant, English poet and prose polemicist. Milton was well
known through his
epic poem Paradise Lost and also for his radical views on republican
religion. He never was well adjusted in school and once got expelled
for having a
fist fight with his tutor. Eventually he began to write poetry in
English, Latin and Italian. John Milton became blind at the age of 43
in 1651, and has
written books containing quotes of how the experience sometimes made
him miserable.

James Thurber - (December 8, 1894-November 2, 1961) James Thurber was
a comedian and cartoonist most known for his contributions to New
Yorker Magazine.
While playing with his brothers William and Robert, William shot him
in the eye with and arrow while playing a game of William Tell making
him almost completely
blind after the loss of an eye. At school James could not play sports
with his friends due to this accident so he decided to work on his
creative mind,
putting his skills in writing.

Claude Monet - also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet
(November 14, 1840 - December 5, 1926) was a founder of French
impressionist painting,
and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's
philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially
as applied to
plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from
the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise. His popularity and fame
grew. By 1907
he had painted many well-known paintings, but by then he had ?his
first problem with his eyesight.? He started to go blind. He still
painted, though his
eyes got worse. He wouldn?t stop painting until he was nearly blind.
In the last decade of his life Monet, nearly blind, painted a group of
large water
lily murals (Nymph
) for the Musde l'Orangerie in Paris.

Horatio Nelson - (29 September 1758 - 21 October 1805) Horatio was a
British admiral and was one of the first to go against the
conventional tactics of

his time by cutting through the enemy's lines in the Napoleonic Wars.
Horatio became blind in one eye early in his Royal Navy career, he
would use his
blindness as cockiness during certain fights. In those days a retreat
or surrender was shown via a system of signal flags, when friendly or
enemy ships
would display the flags Horatio would bring his telescope to his blind
eye and say carry on with the attack, I see no signals.

Dr. Jacob Bolotin - (1888-1924) - The first congenitally blind man to
receive a medical license. Dr. Bolotin lived and practiced in Chicago
during the early
part of the twentieth century and was particularly known for his
expertise on diseases of the heart and lungs. He used his many public
speaking engagements
to advocate for the full inclusion of the blind in education,
employment, and all other aspects of society. Awards named for him are
presented each year
by the National Federation of the Blind to individuals and
organizations who have made substantial contributions toward achieving
the goal of the full
integration of the blind into society on the basis of equality. The
awards are funded by the Alfred and Rosalind Perlman Trust, created by
a bequest from
Dr. Bolotin's nephew and niece. The first Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards
were presented at the 2008 convention of the National Federation of
the Blind.

Jorge Luis Borges - (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) Jorge Luis Borges
was an Argentine writer. His output includes short stories, essays,
poetry, literary
criticism, and translations. Borges was born on August 24, 1899 in
Buenos aires, Argentina, to an educated family descended from famous
military figures
in Argentina's history; in accordance with Argentine custom, he never
used his entire name. His family was comfortably wealthy, but not
quite wealthy enough
to live in downtown Buenos Aires. Instead, they lived in the then
suburb of Palermo, famous for its knife-fights, where urban space gave
way to the countryside.

Joseph Plateau - (October 14, 1801 - September 15, 1883) Joseph
Plateau was a Belgian physicist. In 1836, Plateau invented an early
stroboscopic device,
the "phenakistiscope". It consisted of two disks, one with small
equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and
another containing
a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed,
the synchronization of the windows and the images created an animated
effect. The
projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of
motion, eventually led to the development of cinema. Fascinated by the
persistence of
luminous impressions on the retina, he performed an experiment in
which he gazed directly into the sun for 25 seconds. Consequently, he
lost his eyesight
later in his life. He died in Ghent.

Marla Runyan - (born January 4, 1969) Marla Runyan is a marathon
runner who is legally blind. She is a three-time national champion in
the women's 5.000
metres. Runyan's career as a world-class runner began in 1999 at the
Pan American Games, where she won the 1,500-meter race. The next year,
she placed
eighth in the 1,500-meter in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, making Runyan
the first legally blind athlete to compete in the Games and the
highest finish by
an American woman in that event. In 2002 she finished as the top
American at the 2002 New York City Marathon with a time of 2 hours, 27
minutes and 10
seconds to post the second-fastest debut time ever by an American woman.

Ray Charles - (September 23, 1930 - June 10, 2004) known by his stage
name Ray Charles, was an American pianist and musician who shaped the
sound of rhythm
and blues. He brought a soulful sound to country music, pop standards,
and a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60
Minutes called
the "definitive version of the song, an American anthem. In 1965,
Charles was arrested for possession of heroin, a drug to which he had
been addicted for
nearly 20 years. It was his third arrest for the offence, but he
avoided jail time after kicking the habit in a clinic in Los Angeles.
He spent a year
on parole in 1966.

Sidney Bradford - (May 30, 1906 - August 2, 1960) went blind at 10
months of age but regained sight on both eyes after a cornea
transplant at the age of
52. He was the subject of many scientific studies of perception by
neuropsychologist Richard Gregory. His operation was able to reveal
idiosyncrasies of
the human visual system. For example, not having grown up with vision,
Bradford did not perceive the ambiguity of the Necker cube. Nor was he
able to interpret
the perspective of two-dimensional art. Nevertheless, he could
accurately judge the distance to objects in the same room, having been
familiar with these
distances before regaining sight by virtue of having walked them. In a
similar analogy between vision and sightless (touch-only) experience,
Bradford was
able to visually read the time on the ward clock just after his
operation. Before surgery Bradford was a skilled machinist, but upon
gaining vision, he
became confused and unable to work. He committed suicide two years
after his operation.

Thomas Gore - (born Governor Thomas Pryor Gore on December 10, 1870 -
March 16, 1949) Thomas was a Democratic politician. He became blind as
a child through
two separate accidents but did not give up his dream of becoming a
senator. In 1907, he was elected to the Senate as one of the first two
senators from
the new state of Oklahoma. He was re-elected in 1908 and 1914 but
defeated in 1920. He was known as a member of the progressive wing of
the Democratic
Party, who worked with Republicans such as Robert La Follette. He was
to a large extent no different from any other politician because of
his blindness,
but there were problems, as La Follette recounts an example in his
memoirs when, during a filibuster, Gore did not realize that the
senator who was to
take over speaking for him had left the room, and the filibuster
failed because he did not continue to speak.

William Prescott - (February 20, 1726 - 1795) was an American colonel
in the Revolutionary War who commanded the rebel forces in the Battle
of Bunker Hill.
Prescott became widely attributed for the famous quote, "Do not fire
until you see the whites of their eyes," an important instruction to
his soldiers
in order to conserve ammunition. The former town of Prescott,
Massachusetts, was named in his honor. The town was disincorporated in
1938 as part of the
building of the Quabbin Reservoir, and the land now makes up Prescott
Peninsula, which divides the main branches of the reservoir.
Prescott's likeness
was made into a statue for a memorial for the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Arnolt Schlick - Arnolt was a German organist and composer of the
Renaissance. Though records of his early life are sparse, most likely
he was from the
area around Heidelberg (based on linguistic evidence). He was blind
for much of his life. Schlick is best known for his publication of the
book Spiegel
der Orgelmacher und Organisten in 1511, the first treatise on building
and playing organs written in German. It contains ten chapters, and
covers topics
such as size and shape of pipes, construction of bellows, wind
production, and metallurgy; in addition he covers tuning, and gives
advice on how best to
position the instrument in the building.

Esref Armagan - (born 1953) Esref is a blind painter of Turkish
origin. Mr. Armagan is an important figure in the history of
picture-making, and in the
history of knowledge. His work is remarkable. He has demonstrated for
the first time that a blind person can develop on his or her own
pictorial skills
the equal of most depiction by the sighted. This has not happened
before in the history of picture-making. He was born blind to a poor
family in Turkey,
and has been drawing or painting since childhood. He has had
exhibitions in Turkey and in Holland and the Czech Republic. In 2004,
he was the subject of
a study of human perception, conducted by the psychologist John
Kennedy of University of Toronto.

Frederick Delius - (January 29, 1862 - June 10, 1934) was an English
composer born in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the north
of England.
Although born in England and educated at Bradford Grammar School
(where the singer John Coates was his contemporary), Frederick Delius
felt little attraction
for the country of his birth and spent most of his life abroad, in the
United States and the continent of Europe, chiefly in France.
Nonetheless his music
has been described as 'extremely redolent of the soil of this country
[i.e. Britain] and characteristic of the finer elements of the
national spirit' by
Felix Aprahamian.

 


John Stanley - (January 17, 1712 - May 19, 1786) John Stanley was an
English composer and organist. Stanley, who was blind from an early
age, studied music
with Maurice Greene and held a number of organist appointments in
London, such as St Andrew's, Holborn from 1726. He was a friend of
George Frideric Handel,
and following Handel's death, Stanley joined first with John
Christopher Smith and later with Thomas Linley to continue the series
of oratorio concerts
Handel had established, and succeeded him as a governor of the
Foundling Hospital (continuing his tradition of performing "Messiah"
for them).

Kelvin Tan Weilian - born 5 October 1981) Kelvin Tan Weilian is a
visually impaired professional singer in Singapore. On 1 September
2005 he shot to prominence
when he won Project SuperStar, a Mandarin singing competition hosted
by Singapore's MediaCorp TV Channel U, after garnering 64% of the
533,000 telephone
votes. Kelvin is proficient in both piano and the guitar, and sings in
a variety of languages and dialects. In his debut concert on 22 April
2006 at the
Max Pavilion in Singapore, he sang in Mandarin, English, Thai,
Cantonese and Hokkien.

Omar Abdel-Rahman - (born May 3, 1938) is a blind Egyptian Muslim
leader who is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical
Center which is
part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North
Carolina, United States. Formerly a resident of New York City,
Abdel-Rahman and nine
others were convicted of "seditious conspiracy", which requires only
that a crime be planned, not that it necessarily be attempted. His
prosecution grew
out of investigations of the World Trade Center 1993 bombings.
Abdel-Rahman was born in Egypt in 1938 and lost his eyesight at a
young age due to childhood
diabetes. He studied a Braille version of the Qur'an as a child and
developed an interest in the works of the Islamic purists Ibn Taymiyah
and Sayyid Qutb.
After graduating in Qur'anic studies from Al-Azhar University in
Cairo, the Egyptian government imprisoned him because he was an
opponent of the regime.

Thomas Rhodes Armitage - (1824-1890) Armitage was a British physician,
founder of the Royal National Institute of the Blind. He was raised on
the continent,
first at Avranches, and later at Frankfurt and Offenbach. He attended
the Sorbonne and later King's College, London. He became a physician,
practising
at the Marylebone Dispensary, in the Crimean War, and as a private
consultant in London. He was forced to abandon his medical career
because of declining
vision, eventually becoming blind. Armitage decided to help solve the
problem of making literature available to the blind through embossed
type: in Britain
this had become complicated by the proliferation of different
standards. He formed the "British and Foreign Society for Improving
the Embossed Literature
of the Blind", later the "British and Foreign Blind Association for
Promoting the Education and Employment of the Blind" and (after his
death) the "National
Institute for the Blind".

Joseph Pulitzer - (April 10, 1847 - October 29, 1911) Joseph was a
Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing
the Pulitzer Prizes
(along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow
journalism. In 1882 Pulitzer purchased the New York World, a newspaper
that had been losing

 

 

 

Abdurrahman Wahid - former President of Indonesia (1940- )

Al Hibbler

Audre Lorde - Poet - Activist (1934 - 1992)

Blind Lemon Jefferson - (1893 - 1929) - Blues musician & singer

Blind Willie McTell - (1901 - 1959)

Brandon Jardine - was stabbed in the eyes by his parents with red hot
pokers in 1991.

Clarence Carter - (born 1936)

David Blunkett - (born 1947) - British ex-cabinet minister

Denise Leigh - opera singer and winner of Channel 4's Operatunity

Dorothea Lange - Photographer (1895 - 1965)

Dr William Moon - inventor of Moon system of reading

Eamon de Valera - (1882 - 1975) - President of Ireland.

Eduard Degas - French painter

Ella Fitzgerald - (1917 - 1996) - jazz singer - went blind as a result
of diabetes in her old age.

Enrico Dandolo - (died 1205) - doge of Venice - blind from trauma.

Esmond Knight - British actor

Fritz Lang - (1890 - 1976) - nearly blind at the end of his life

Francisco Goya - (1746 - 1828) - painter - became blind and deaf in
late life - painted blind(ed) subjects.

Frankie Armstrong - English folk singer and voice teacher - sight
degraded in late teens onwards from glaucoma

Frida Kahlo - Artist (1907 - 1954)

George Shearing - (1919 - ) - jazz pianist.

Gilbert Montagn

Ginny Owens - Gospel singer - totally blind from age 2

Harilyn Rousso - Disability Rights Activist/Psychotherapist (1946-)

Henry Fawcett - UK Postmaster General - 19th Century

Homer - Greek poet said to have been blind.

Honor Daumier - (1808 - 1879) - French caricaturist - painter - and
sculptor - blind later in life.
http://youtu.be/GK6glYgAeZQ

·        
Isaac the Blind - (1160 - 1235) - French cabbalist (possibly blind from
birth)

Isaac - biblical patriarch

James Joyce - (1882 - 1941) - writer - at times blind - underwent
several operations

Jessica Callahan - singer - blind from retinopathy of prematurity

Jhamak Ghimire - Nepalese Poet and Writer (1980)

Joaquin Rodrigo - composer - from an illness at age three

Johann Sebastian Bach - (1685 - 1750) - became blind in later life.

John II of Aragon - (1397 - 1479) - able to see again after cataract
surgery (couching) by Abiathar Crescas

John Wesley Powell - Explorer - Geologist (1834 - 1902)

Jose Feliciano - (born 1945) - blind from birth due to congenital
glaucoma

Joshua Reynolds - (1723 -1792) - British painter - blind later in life.

Judi Chamberlin - Mental Patients' Liberation Activist (1944-)

King John the Blind of Bohemia - (1309 - 1346)

Mike May - (born 1954) - regained partial vision due to stem cell
research.

Ronnie Milsap

Samson - Biblical character - blinded by the Philistines

St. Paul - Apostle

Stalebread Lacombe - Jazz musician - went blind in middle age

Surdas - a Hindu poet - saint and musician of India

Tim Cordes

Tom Wiggins (1849 -1908)

W.C. Handy - (1873 -1958) - Blues composer - went blind in middle age

Wilma Mankiller - Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1945-)

Zohar Sharon - blind pro golfe

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_dS2qHrbhI&feature=youtu.be&a 

 

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