Thomas Fuller, was an African sold into slave in 1724 at age 14, was sometimes known as the "Virginia Calculator" for his extraordinary ability to solve complex mathematical problems in his head. He was asked how many seconds there were in a year he briefly answered 31,536,000 seconds
He was asked again how many seconds lived a man who is 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours, he answered in a minute and a half 2.210.500.800. One of the men was solving problems on paper and informed Fuller he was wrong because the answer was much smaller. Fuller quickly replied: "What's up, you forgot leap years, When leap years were added to the account, the sums matched."
Fuller was one of the first recorded cases in the literature of the sage syndrome, when in 1789, Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, described his incredible ability to calculate, without having an education and instruction in mathematics, his ability was used as proof that the enslaved African-Americans were on par with whites in intelligence, which fueled some pro-abolitionist discussions.
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