A WONDERFUL MEMORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 6, 10 February 1909, Page 60

A WONDERFUL MEMORY.

E. C. Laston, who has issued a challenge to the world for vne memory championship, although only a young man of 23 years, is a veritable walking encyclopaedia (says "Tit Bits”), for he has memorised 40,000 dates of the principal events in the world's history, since the creation. It was quite by accident that he discovered that he had an exceptional gift of memory. He was being trained as an army officer when an attack of rheumatic fever dispelled, his hopes in that direction. At that time he happened to meet the Zancigs in India, who, noting what a remarkable memory he had for dates, advised him to cultivate it. He then purchased a copy of Haydn's “Dictionary of’ Dates,” and sought to commit to memory the dates'of the most important events in the world’s history by writing 50 to 100 dates on a piece of paper, and re-writing them three or four times until he had fully grasped them,, with the result that he has a re? pertoire of thousands of dates, and can give the correct answers without the slightest hesitation.