In 2014, The Washington Post wrote about a studythat looked at surveys conducted at Washington University at St. Louis between 1974 and 2014 to measure forgetfulness when it comes to past presidents.
The surveys all asked students to write down the names of as many presidents as they could, and to organize them in chronological order.
"What they found was a pretty clear pattern" writes Roberto A. Ferdman. "Nearly everyone in each of the four surveys was able to identify the first few presidents — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, specifically — as well as the most recent handful … But by and large, the ability to name presidents faded over time, and often to a point of near non-remembrance."
So, if you want to impress your friends this Presidents' Day, you may want to consider memorizing all 44 names.
Turns out, it isn't all that hard — and you can do it in 60 minutes or less.
<span>Two-time national memory champion Ron White.Courtesy of Ron White</span>
"It is very possible for almost anyone to memorize the US presidents in a very short amount of time," says Ron White, a two-time national memory champion. "A 6-year-old girl asked me if I could teach her all the names — so I did. She memorized them in perfect order in about 60 minutes. After completion, she could say the names of all US presidents forwards and backwards."
White says he taught her to memorize all 44 names using a technique known as the Mind Palace, which has been around for at least 2,500 years and is written about in the "Sherlock Holmes" books and utilized by Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre.
"It's where you visualize what you want to recall on furniture in your home," he explains.
White says it will take you about 20 minutes upfront to build a Mind Palace — meaning, to select pieces of furniture in your home or office. "But once you do that, you can use this Mind Palace for the rest of your life for so many other things," he explains. "And once you do and you have some practice with the technique, you should be able to memorize 44 names in less than 10 minutes." That kind of thing takes White less than four minutes, he says.
