Amazing Memory Skills in History

The human memory can be an amazing thing! Here are times were amazing memory skills came in handy throughout history!

1. Doug Hegdahl, a POW in Vietnam showed us his amazing memory skills when he memorized the names of 256 of his fellow POWs. With the help of US Air Force officer and fellow POW, Joe Creeca, Doug Hegdhal was able to remember names, other personal information, as well as capture dates and method of captures of some 256 fellow POWS. The way he remembered all of this was to put the information that he was learning to the tune of the old nursery rhyme, old McDonald had a farm. When released by his captors he was able to report back important details about who was being held as a POW.

memory skills

2. Ron White is a US veteran of the Navy, he was also a world championship holder two times. Ron also held the record for fastest time to memorize a whole a deck of cards in the USA. In 2012 he began to remember the first and last names, and the ranks of every fallen US Military member who died in Afganistan. That was 2,300 people and over 7,000 words. It took ten months to memorize it. He travels America writing this information out on his memory wall. It takes over ten hours to write out all 7,000 words from memory. It is his tribute to remember the fallen.

3. Akira Haraguchi holds the unofficial record of how many digits of PI has been remembered. He repeated 100,000 digits in 16 hours starting on October 3, 2006, at 9 am. He ended up reciting 83,431 digits by nightfall. Stopping with digit 100,000 at 1;28 am on October 4, 2006. The Guinness world record for digits remembered is 70,000, held by Rajveer Mena from India.

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