![]() But I'm making up for it now," she says with a wide smile. But she took time to chronicle his horrific abuse in her autobiography Forbidden Childhood. ![]() "And that was what I did eventually, but I was 19 when I did it."Īfter Slenczynska's father died in 1951, her career flourished without him, as she made well-received recordings for the Decca label beginning in 1956. "I dreamed of running away from home," she recalls. "My only thought was to please my father and escape the magic stick." That "magic stick" was an 18-inch wooden shovel handle that Slenczynska's father used to beat her. "I wasn't allowed to think of myself," Slenczynska says. Slenczynska absorbed much from the great European pianists but her most consequential teacher was her father, a failed musician hell-bent on making a star out of his daughter even at the cost of her childhood. At 97, she can still make Chopin's chords shake with thunder. "The most important thing I learned was how to make the music carry a long, musical line," she says, moving over to the piano to demonstrate how to measure out those lines in terms of the climax points in Chopin's dramatic Ballade No. Augustin was forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation but was released 2 days later.Īugustin De Mello has proclaimed his son's genius but critics believe Adragon was merely a bright student who was pushed beyond his capabilities.But that's not the only advice Slenczynska picked up from the famed Russian. Augustin was later arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment, and police found several guns and suitcases of ammunition in De Mello's home. He earned a degree in computational mathematics and was accepted into a graduate program at the Florida Institute of Technology.Īdragon's achievements were somewhat undermined when it was reported that his father Augustin De Mello had been pushing his son excessively and reportedly threatened teachers to give Adragon passing grades in spite of his lagging performance. At 5 years old, he joined Mensa and by the time he was 8 he was enrolled at a community college.Īdragon gained national attention at the age of 11 when he graduated from the University of California breaking the record for youngest college graduate in 1989. At the age of 4 he achieved a perfect score on diagnostic math tests and was inducted into Mensa with a measured IQ of nearly 200. He enrolled in high school at the age of 5 and graduated a year later and began teaching college at the age of 17. In 2008, Kearney earned $25,000 on the television game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?Īccording to Adragon's father, he spoke his first words at only 7 weeks old and by the age of 2 could both read and write. His ambition early on was to become a TV game show host but later developed an interest in chemistry. His parents realized their son was special when at 4 months old Michael began asking them questions like, "What's for dinner?" At 8 months he started reading and became an avid fan of game shows such as The Price Is Right. For a while, he also held the record for the world's youngest postgraduate, but his master’s degree record was broken by Tathagat Avatar Tulsi. Michael proved to be an extremely gifted child managing to set several world records such as the world's youngest college graduate at the age of 10. Michael was later diagnosed with ADHD but his parents declined to put him on Ritalin medication. Doctors warned his parents that he may develop mentally slow but boy were they wrong. Michael was born prematurely on January 18, 1984, in Honolulu, Hawaii. These incredible individuals waste no time in their academic achievement and seem poised from the very beginning to accomplish great things in life. They move up the academic ranks at an astonishing rate that leaves others gobsmacked while racking up a bounty of awards and accolades along the way. Their stellar intellectual gifts gain them access to the best colleges at an age where most of us are still learning basic arithmetic. They could be the next Einstein or Tesla who discovers the tremendous breakthroughs that forever change life as we know it. ![]() We see in them a bright future they are the greatest hope for finding solutions to the scourges of civilization. ![]() If you’d been there when Mozart composed his first piece of music at age 5, or when Picasso finished his first painting. They often join the ranks of Mensa with their freakish IQs and perfect SAT scores. We all know a child prodigy when we see one. Child prodigies who make the news and appear on talk shows as an awe-inspiring source of wonder and fascination. You've likely heard of them - little geniuses who started reading and writing at an impossibly early age. College courses can be tough enough as an adult, but imagine taking them as a 10-year-old! There are some precocious students however, who make the transition well before they reach puberty. The college experience is for many a rite of passage into adulthood. ![]()
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