The Enslaved Genius Who Calculated Faster Than Whites Thomas Fuller, "The Virginia Calculator," was kidnapped from West Africa at 14 and enslaved in Virginia. Despite never learning to read or write in English, he could calculate faster than men with pen and paper—answering in 90 seconds how many seconds a 70-year-old man had lived. When white observers said he was wrong, Fuller corrected THEM about leap years. The shocking truth? He learned these skills in Africa, where mental arithmetic was co