Blindness

An Ancient Egyptian cure for blindness was to pour mashed-up pig's eye into the patient's ear.

Galileo Galilei, the renowned Italian astronomer, physicist, and mathematician, went totally blind before his death. It is believed that he developed blindness due to a combination of factors, including cataracts and progressive deterioration of his vision.

At the turn of the 20th century blindness was a forbidden subject in women's magazines because so many cases were related to venereal disease. However after the deaf and blind American student Helen Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, she began writing about the subject. 

Helen Keller

In 1905, an eye surgeon called Eduard Zirm from the small town of Olmutz in Moravia pioneered corneal grafting. This was the first successful human transplant procedure and it meant that many were able to have their sight restored to their diseased or damaged eyes.

The first guide dog training schools were established in Germany during World War I to enhance the mobility of returning veterans who were blinded in combat. 

A blind man is assisted by a guide dog in Brasília, Brazil. By Antonio Cruz

Buddy, the first seeing-eye dog in the United States, was presented to Morris S. Frank on April 25, 1928. Frank was trained to work with the female German Shepherd at a dog-training school in Switzerland, called Fortunate Fields, and on the streets of nearby Vevey. Frank and Buddy returned to New York City on June 11, 1928, and were together until her death on May 23, 1938; he named her replacement Buddy, as he would all his subsequent guide dogs.

Jimmy Doolittle performed the first blind aircraft flight from Mitchel Field on Long Island in 1929 proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.

The original Bozo the Clown, who died in 1997, had vision loss in one eye but fooled doctors by memorizing the eye chart so he could serve in World War II.

On March 6, 2010 a blind hiker, 45-year-old Mike Hanson, set on the Appalachian trail with a goal to inspire other visually impaired people. Seven months later, he finished hiking the 1,700 miles using only a cell phone, GPS open-source software, and hearing to locate camps, trailheads, and water sites.

World Sight Day is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment. 

Approximately 70,000 people in the U.S. are both blind and deaf.

Blind people smile like everyone else, even though they've never seen anyone else smile. It's just a natural human expression.

Children who are born blind will cover their eyes when they hear bad news.

If you go blind in one eye, you only lose about one fifth of your vision, but all your sense of depth. 

Red is the last color to go and the first to return when people lose and regain their eyesight.

All babies are color blind when they are born.

All mammals, except man and monkey are color blind.

Kiwi birds are blind, they hunt only by smell. 

Bats are not blind. In fact, they have very good eyesight, especially in low-light conditions. The misconception that bats are blind comes from the fact that they are nocturnal animals. They are most active at night, when it is dark outside. This means that they often use echolocation to find their way around, and their eyes are not as important as they would be during the day.

Source Greatfacts.cataracts