Do you realize how many fascinating people there are on our planet? The people that make you truly admire them, sometimes without even meaning to. We’ve all heard at least a few extraordinary stories that left us in complete awe; left us wanting to know more about how they’ve come to be that way, to be able to do what they do. To surprise the world yet again by demonstrating the extraordinary skills that make them stand out. In my case, the people I, to be honest have only recently found out about – though find simply amazing – are the people that have the condition called savant syndrome. Savant syndrome is an extremely rare condition in which a person with various mental disabilities demonstrates one or a few of really special skills and are able to do things that are, safe to say, out of the ordinary. For example, as early as 1789, the case of Thomas Fuller, savant with lightning calculating abilities, was reported by Rush. It was established that Fuller couldn’t comprehend much beyond counting but when he was asked how many seconds a person has lived who was 70…show more content… Langdon Down in 1887. Having presented several cases of people having skills way above average, he painted the general picture of savant syndrome – special skills combined with a phenomenal memory. Down also was the one who provided the term ‘idiot savant’. In 1887, the term ‘idiot’ was for people with IQ less than 25 and the word savant came from a French word savoir, which means ‘to know’. Later, the term stopped being used, for it was proved that in most of the cases savants had an IQ higher than 40. The term savant syndrome was given and is now commonly used. It is also preferred to another term ‘autistic savant’ because approximately only 50% of savants are autistic and other 50% have other CNS injuries. Meaning, not all savants are autistic and not all autistic people have savant