Iftah Ya Simsim
Iftah Ya Simsim (; meaning "Open Sesame") is the first international co-production of the American children's television series "Sesame Street" created in the Arab world. It premiered in Kuwait on September 14, 1979 and was broadcast in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, running until April 6, 1990. The program continued to be well-known decades after it went off the air. In 1978, educators, mass media officers, and social planners agreed to adopt "Sesame Street" as a feasible and economical solution for the low attendance in preschools and illiteracy that plagued the region. They approached the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the producers of the American show, and purchased the rights to create an Arab version for US$2.5 million.
William James Sidis
William James Sidis (; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills. He is notable for his 1920 book "The Animate and the Inanimate", in which he postulates the existence of dark matter, entropy and the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics. Sidis was raised in a particular manner by his father, psychologist Boris Sidis, who wished his son to be gifted. Sidis first became famous for his precocity and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from public life. Eventually, he avoided mathematics altogether, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms. He entered Harvard at age 11 and, as an adult, was claimed to have an extremely high IQ, and to be conversant in about 25 languages and dialects. Some of these claims have not been verifiable, but peers such as Norbert Wiener supported the assertion that his intelligence was very high.