Viral Hit of the Weekend: Deaf Woman Hears Voice for the First Time

October 03, 2011

Starting last week, you may have seen the video below of a 29-year-old woman named Sarah Churman filmed by her husband as she gains her hearing for the first time. The clip is the #3 most-viewed video of the past week and remains the #3 most-viewed video today in the United States as of Monday afternoon. It's also still one of our Most Shared.

The video skyrocketed to fame on Friday when it was viewed over 1.7 million times on that day alone. YouTube data shows that views started to spike very late Thursday night when it was posted on social bookmarking site Reddit.

The chart below show's how quickly the video has taken off in popularity:



The documenting and sharing of seemingly very personal moments is nothing new on YouTube, but this is the second massively popular example we've seen in the past month. (See: DADT Trending Video: 'Telling My Dad that I'm Gay')

In fact, this is actually not the first video of a deaf person gaining their hearing to draw a big audience. A video -- similar in concept -- of a little boy having his implant activated was posted last summer and it's been seen over a million views to date as well:

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