His story was truly remarkable:
Kim Peek, the real Rain Man whose almost unimaginable powers of memory were coupled with severe disabilities and who inspired the Oscar-winning film role played by Dustin Hoffman, has died of a heart attack in his home town of Salt Lake City, aged 58.
Peek has been called a "mega-savant" for his ability to memorise to the word up to 12,000 books, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He could read two pages in about 10 seconds – the right page with his right eye and the left simultaneously with his left eye.
He knew phone books by heart, and could tell you what day of the week a particular date fell upon going back decades. One of his party tricks was to tell strangers the names of the people who used to live next door to them years ago.
At the same time, though, he had deep disabilities and relied on his father Fran for help dressing, brushing his hair and other simple motor skills.
More from the Salt Lake Tribune:
An MRI later showed that his brain lacked a corpus callosum -- the connecting tissue between the left and right hemispheres. Peek said his son's brain lacked the normal filtering system for receiving information. The condition
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left him able to retain nearly 98 percent of everything he read, heard or watched on television. The average person only retains about 45 percent.
As both a child and adult, Peek's favorite place was the library, where he devoured books at a confounding rate. At the time of his death, Peek is believed to have committed at least 9,000 books to memory. He could recite so many gigabytes of facts that people often called him Kim-puter. NASA made him the subject of MRI-based research.
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Actress Brittany Murphy, 32, of an apparent heart attack.
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