Kim Peek, the autistic man who was Dustin Hoffman's inspiration for Rain Man's character Raymond Babbitt has passed away. Why should you care? In many ways, he is the most interesting and talented person to die in 2009 (yep, more than Michael Jackson). Here's a quick round-up of his abilities:
• He could read two facing pages simultaneously, one with each eye.
• He read 12,000 books and remembered every one of the pages.
• He knew so many plays and music pieces with absolute precision that he would be able to tell if an instrument was a note off in a philharmonic orchestra.
• He could remember every day in the calendar, area codes, ZIP codes, maps, countless classical compositions, a zillion trivia bits across dozens of fields in human knowledge and the arts, and give GPS-like directions for any city of the US.
Head to the The New York Times to read the complete obituary. (via Gizmodo)
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