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BOSTON - Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

"It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time," said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. "This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie."

For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer’s mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Spencer, who doesn’t know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.

In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.

"I never thought much about it," Spencer said in a statement released by the society. "It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting." Spencer has recently been hospitalized and could not be reached for comment.

It wasn’t until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph’s significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery Wednesday they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.

D. Brenton Simons, the society’s president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller’s life.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While "doll" was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word "water," as famously depicted in the film "The Miracle Worker." Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

"The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it’s a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne’s life," Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller’s childhood: that devotion, Sullivan’s push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen’s attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan’s arrival as her teacher.

"It’s a beautiful composition," she said. "It’s not even the individual elements. It’s the fact that it has all of the components."

Now the legend has been joined in the record books by Jon Fitch. The Indiana native’s unanimous decision victory over Chris Wilson was his eighth straight octagon victory, tying the UFC record.

“It’s a huge honor to be considered along with a legend like Royce,” said Fitch, who upped his career record to 16-2. “I don’t go thinking about stuff like that while I’m training. All I ever say is I want the best matches people can give me. I’ll fight anyone. I want tough opponents.”

Since making his UFC debut in December 2005 with a unanimous decision win over Brock Larson, Fitch disposed of Josh Burkman (submission); Thialgo Alves (TKO); Kuniyoshi Hironaka (unanimous decision); Luigi Fiorvanti (submission); Roan Carneiro (submission) and Diego Sanchez (split decision) before Saturday’s win.

Opinions about Silva

With Anderson Silva’s victory over an elite opponent like Dan Henderson, is he the new Chuck Liddell of the UFC as its most dominant fighter?

Dan Wetzel’s outstanding column on Anderson last week hit the nail on the head. He’s dominating MMA now the way Tyson did boxing in the late 1980s and then again in the mid-1990s. He’s not only beating elite fighters, he’s destroying them, which may be even better than what Tyson was doing. Tyson lost to the best fighters he faced (Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis), but Silva isn’t letting them get out of the second round.

Presently, there seems to be no challenger who poses a threat of getting Anderson Silva’s middleweight championship belt after his victory over Dan Henderson. Do you think he would consider moving up to the light heavyweight division? If so, what are the chances of him being the light heavyweight champion? The 205-pound division is stacked, but he could easily get a crack at that belt since he is the middleweight champion and considered the best fighter pound-for-pound. Henderson was very competitive and was a champion at both middleweight and light heavyweight. There would absolutely be no doubt that Anderson Silva is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world if he gets the light heavyweight belt.

Silva doesn’t have to move up to prove he’s the best, because he’s already proven it. What more does he need to do? If Silva were to move up, it would either be because he could no longer make the 185-pound middleweight limit or to take a monster fight the public is demanding to see. But right now, light heavyweight champion Rampage Jackson has plenty of big challenges in his own division. I also don’t believe Silva has trouble making 185, so there is no compelling reason for him to go. Wanderlei Silva plans to drop to 185 after his May 24 fight with Keith Jardine and UFC president Dana White said Tuesday he wouldn’t mind a Silva vs. Silva bout sometime later this year. White said he wouldn’t stand in the way if Anderson Silva wanted to move to light heavyweight. “What else is there for him to prove at middleweight?” White said. “If he comes to me and says he wants to fight at light heavyweight, I can’t argue with him.” But White said Silva has given him no indications he’s planning to do that.

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NEW YORK - Even giving away something for free can turn into a hassle in New York.

A video-sharing Web site set out to observe Leap Day by handing out prizes worth up to $29 on Feb. 29 outside Union Square Park.

As the clocked toward the event’s scheduled time — 2:29 p.m. — people shouting "Make it rain!" and "Give me my money!" trampled one another and mobbed the costumed representatives of CashTomato.com

Some people wrested bags of cash-stuffed envelopes and other items from the CashTomato workers, said Jason Buzi, who identified himself as the company’s senior vice president.

The prize givers weren’t the only ones who were overwhelmed.

"Before I knew it, I was on the floor" and under a pile of people, said Anabel DeJesus, 17. She left without any prize. "It’s not worth it," she told the Daily News.

Police didn’t have any information Saturday on whether anyone was injured or arrested.

Buzi said CashTomato has staged relatively uneventful giveaways in other cities, and he was startled by the Manhattan mayhem.

"It turned out to be a lot of aggressive people," he said. "Maybe next time, I would plan this better."

In the brawl for the hearts and wallets of young male fans, ultimate fighting has boxing and wrestling on the ropes.

Sometimes success hinges on the little things. Outlawing the eye-gouge, for instance, or banning the crotch kick.

Such rule changes have helped to turn mixed martial arts from a virtual outlaw operation into one of the fastest growing sports in the country, muting critics, enticing advertisers, and taking on its rivals—boxing and professional wrestling—for both fans and market share.

The sport Senator John McCain once famously branded as “human cockfighting” rakes in more than $200 million in pay-per-view loot, has broadcast deals with Spike TV, Fox Sports Net and MyNetwork, and has spawned a reality series, The Ultimate Fighter, which along with the fights grabbed more 18- to 34-year-old male eyeballs than either Nascar or the N.B.A. playoff games.

Robert Jacobson, president and C.E.O. of In Demand Networks, which provides about 90 percent of the cable industry’s pay-per-view content, notes that mixed martial arts accounted for virtually no revenue on his network in 2004. “Now it’s neck and neck with boxing, and is a little ahead of wrestling,” he says.

The current leader in the M.M.A. business, Ultimate Fighting Championship, went from $45 million in pay-per-view revenues in 2005 to $222 million in 2006 and appears to have held that number for 2007, according to Deana Myers, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan. U.F.C.’s revenue numbers are close to, and at points have exceeded, those reported by HBO, the main boxing pay-per-view provider, and those of World Wrestling Entertainment, the dominant force in professional wrestling.

Mixed martial arts (M.M.A.) has grown in popularity despite having had less financial backing and nowhere near the distribution network of boxing or wrestling to publicize its matches. Newspapers ignore M.M.A. events M.M.A. and the major networks eschew them. Both New York And Massachusetts, two of the most important states from a marketing and distribution standpoint, ban the matches altogether.

Marc Ratner, the Ultimate Fighting Championship vice president of government and regulatory affairs, says the problem is the long shadow cast by the bad-old days of the sport—“when it was advertised as no-holds barred,” and often left a pool of blood on the mat to prove it.

But momentum is building in M.M.A.’s favor. Thirty-two states have sanctioned the sport, with 10 of them coming on board over the last 14 months alone.

Ratner’s own conversion is telling. Back in 1995, he called the sport  “barbaric,” and, as the respected head of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, he helped Senator McCain lead a largely successful charge to outlaw ultimate fighting across the country.

Then, in 2000, members of the sport and the athletic commissions in Nevada and New Jersey hammered out medical and judging standards, weight limits, and restrictions on fighting techniques for M.M.A. Nevada hosted its first M.M.A. fight the next year. “It became something you could regulate,” says Ratner, who joined U.F.C. in 2007.