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50 free Helen Keller trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Helen Keller trivia quiz covers far more than the water pump. It starts at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, with the illness that took a 19-month-old's sight and hearing, then follows the arrival of Anne Sullivan, the breakthrough of April 1887, the schools in Boston and New York, the Radcliffe degree paid for by a Standard Oil magnate, and the long public life that followed: fourteen books, lecture tours to dozens of countries, socialism and the Wobblies, an FBI file, an attempted elopement, Akita dogs from Japan, and the play and film that made her childhood a legend. The easy questions are ones most people know: what she lost, who taught her, which word unlocked language. The medium ones ask about her family, her schools, her companions, her politics and her friendship with Mark Twain. The hard ones dig into Laura Bridgman, the Tadoma method, The Frost King plagiarism row, Peter Fagan, Swedenborg, Hachiko and the Alabama state quarter. It suits a classroom unit, a disability history round or anyone who thinks the story ends at the pump. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which state was Helen Keller born in 1880?
Alabama
Her birthplace in Tuscumbia is now a house museum that hosts an annual Helen Keller Day.
Q 02How old was Keller when an illness left her deaf and blind?
19 months
Modern doctors think it may have been meningitis, rubella or scarlet fever.
Q 03Which two senses did Keller lose as a toddler?
Sight and hearing
She communicated with home signs until she was seven, when her teacher arrived.
Q 04Keller was the first deafblind person in the United States to do what?
Earn a college degree
She graduated in 1904 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Q 05What was the name of the Keller family homestead where Helen was born?
Ivy Green
Her grandfather built the main house in 1820; the pump between it and the birthplace cottage is still there.
Q 06Keller's father Arthur had served as a captain on which side in the Civil War?
The Confederacy
He later edited the Tuscumbia North Alabamian newspaper; her maternal grandfather was a Confederate general.
Q 07Roughly how many home signs had Keller invented to communicate with her family by age seven?
More than 60
She could also tell people apart by the vibration of their footsteps.
Q 08Which famous inventor advised the Kellers to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind?
Alexander Graham Bell
Bell was working with deaf children at the time and remained a lifelong friend.
Q 09Keller's mother sought help after reading Dickens's account of which educated deafblind woman?
Laura Bridgman
Dickens described Bridgman in American Notes; she had been taught at the same Perkins school Sullivan attended.
Q 10How old was Anne Sullivan when she became Keller's teacher?
20
She had just graduated as valedictorian from the Perkins school and was herself visually impaired.
Q 11What did Keller call March 5, 1887, the day Sullivan arrived at her house?
'My soul's birthday'
Sullivan began at once by spelling a word into her hand for the present she had brought.
Q 12What was the first word Sullivan spelled into Keller's hand?
Doll
Keller later broke a mug in frustration during a lesson before her breakthrough.
Q 13Which word did Keller finally understand while Sullivan ran cool liquid over her hand?
Water
'The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!' she wrote.
Where at Ivy Green did the famous breakthrough between Keller and Sullivan take place?
Q 21Which dog breed did Keller introduce to America after a 1937 visit to Japan?
Akita
Her first, Kamikaze-Go, died within two months; his brother Kenzan-Go, nicknamed Go-Go, slept at the foot of her bed.
Q 22Which famously loyal Japanese dog did Keller ask about, later touching his statue at Shibuya Station?
Hachiko
Hachiko had waited for his dead master for about ten years.
Q 23Which political organisation did Keller join in 1909?
Socialist Party of America
She backed its candidate in every presidential race he ran.
At the well pump
The pump still stands between the main house and the cottage where Helen was born.
Q 15Which institution did Keller enter in 1900 and graduate from in 1904?
Radcliffe College
She lived in Briggs Hall and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Q 16Which Standard Oil magnate, introduced by Mark Twain, paid for Keller's education?
Henry Huttleston Rogers
Twain was a devoted admirer of Keller and coined the phrase 'miracle worker' for Sullivan.
Q 17What is the Tadoma method, which Keller used to 'hear' speech?
Feeling the speaker's lips and throat with her fingers
She also read braille and, by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop, could experience music.
Q 18Whom did Anne Sullivan marry in 1905?
John Macy
Macy, a Harvard instructor and critic, helped Keller with her books; the marriage broke down by 1914.
Q 19Polly Thomson, hired as Keller's housekeeper and later her constant companion, came from which country?
Scotland
She had no experience with deaf or blind people when hired, and stayed until her death in 1960.
Q 20Keller secretly became engaged in her thirties to which man, nicknamed 'the fingerspelling socialist'?
Peter Fagan
The young Boston Herald reporter had been sent as her secretary; the attempted elopement was thwarted by her family.
Q 24Keller was a founding member of which organisation in 1920?
American Civil Liberties Union
She had also sent money to the NAACP in 1916, ashamed of the South's treatment of Black people.
Q 25Which radical labour union, nicknamed the Wobblies, did Keller join in 1912?
Industrial Workers of the World
She said parliamentary socialism was 'sinking in the political bog' and wrote for the union between 1916 and 1918.
Q 26Which newspaper's editor did Keller mock as 'socially blind and deaf' for attacking her politics?
The Brooklyn Eagle
He had claimed her 'mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development'.
Q 27Which US presidential candidate did Keller support in each of his campaigns?
Eugene V. Debs
She was an outspoken opponent of Woodrow Wilson.
Q 28Keller met every US president from Grover Cleveland to whom?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Q 29Keller's 1891 story The Frost King led to accusations of what?
Plagiarism
An investigation upheld the charge; the Perkins director suggested she had unconsciously remembered a story read to her.
Q 30What is the title of Keller's 1903 autobiography, written while she was in college?
The Story of My Life
It became the source for the play The Miracle Worker.