In comic books and movies, usually all it takes is a freak accident to turn someone into a web slinger or a hulking green giant. However, reality is a bit different from fiction, and maybe a lot more awesome.
There have been reported cases of acquired savant syndrome, where a seemingly average person suddenly displays abilities that can only be described as exceptional, often following an injury. Here are four people who became sudden geniuses with acquired savant syndrome.
Orlando L. Serrell
Orlando Serrell enjoyed a normal childhood like other kids, until a baseball accident when he was ten years old. On January 15, 1979, Serrell was hit by a baseball on the left side of his head. He was hit so hard, that he fell to the ground and lost consciousness. The ten-year-old boy later got up and continued playing. The accident was followed by a period of him suffering from headaches.
When he lost the headaches, Orlando Serrell gained the ability to perform calendrical calculations with amazing speed and accuracy, that is, give him any date and he'll tell you what day it was. Also, he can recall, to a certain degree, the weather and what he did since the day of the accident.
Anthony Cicoria
To be fair, Anthony Cicoria is already an impressive individual even before his life-changing accident - he is a doctor who specializes in orthopedics. Back in 1994, when Cicoria was 42 years old, he had just finished taking a call from a public phone. Standing next to the telephone, Cicoria was struck by lightning. His heart reportedly stopped from the incident, but thanks to coincidence, he was resuscitated by an intensive care unit nurse waiting to use the phone.
After the incident, which left him with burns and affected his memory, Cicoria had an "insatiable urge" to listen to classical music. He later had his own piano and taught himself how to play. Tony Cicoria spent most of his time playing the piano and composing his own music. The sudden musical savant later debuted, as a pianist, at the Goodrich Theater in New York.
Alonzo Clemons
Clemons is now known as a famous American sculptor, one whose works often focused on animal designs and have fetched as much as $45,000. As a child, Alonzo Clemons suffered from severe brain injury. While it has left him with a developmental disability, he started displaying an incredible aptitude in clay sculptures. As a child, Clemons started sculpting accurate animal figures using clay in school. When his teachers took those clays from him, he found tar from the pavement and molded them into animals.
While he has difficulty doing everyday tasks, such as tying his shoelaces or eating on his own, Clemons has the amazing ability to create 3D models of animals after only seeing them for a moment. He can also look at 2D images of animals and create accurate recreations of these animals.
Eadweard Muybridge
The English-American photographer went down in history as a pioneer in photographic studies of motion and motion-picture projection. However, he started out his career as a bookseller. But in July 1860, the coach he was in fell off a cliff at a Texas border, causing a serious head injury. After he woke up, he experienced headache, double vision, and troubles with his senses, with some accounts even claiming that his hair turned from brown to gray in three days.
The accident also changed his behavior, turning him into a more outgoing individual, pushing him to a short career as a venture capitalist and later, a photographer. The former smart and reserved bookseller became an eccentric artistic savant, his friends claimed.
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