On This Day
Claudius met an untimely end; The whirlpool galaxy is discovered; The cornerstone of the "White House" is laid; The Greenwich meridian is set as 0 degrees; Paddington Bear makes his debut. The advent of the world wide web - and specifically wikipedia - enables us to get details of what happened "on this day" in history.
...
October 13th is also the birth date of (amongst many, many others of course) Liilie Langtry, Leon Leonwood Bean (yes - the L.L. Bean), Wilfred Pickles, Art Tatum, Lenny Bruce, Margaret Thatcher, Nana Mouskouri, Paul Simon, Marie Osmond, Jerry Rice and John Regis. It is also Azerbaijani Railway Day!
For me, one of the two reasons that this particular date of the year stands out is that half my life ago I was taking part in the most "significant" run in my running 'career' - the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens.
The story of that event is told in my newly created wiki - still rather sparsely populated - that I intend to use to recall some 'memorable' bits of my life and I have no intention of repeating it here. Instead these are just a few thoughts about the whole "on this day" phenomena and how it impacts me and my life.
There are many reasons why a particular date would become significant. Sometimes the date itself is the "trigger" for the memory - in other cases the event will be remembered, but it is necessary to check what the date actually was. The former group will include birthdays, anniversaries and so on where reaching that day is a cause for some sort of remembrance - maybe happy - maybe sad - always significant. The Athens Marathon was very much in the latter set - I had to go looking at the calendar and my running diary to find out what date I ran it - many of the things about it remain firmly imprinted in my memory - but not the date! Before checking I could have told you that it was a Sunday, in October, in 1985 - but I couldn't have got any closer.
I think that the way these things are remembered depends on the individual - for most things I will have little clue about precisely when it happened - perhaps like the marathon I could manage to narrow it down to the year, usually even the month, but no closer - whilst for other people I suspect that the date is ingrained in their memories and the day triggers the memory of the event rather than anything else. It isn't, of course, always that way round for me - it would be unwise to have to check the exact date of my wife's birthday or of our wedding anniversary!!
Generally speaking I am much more likely to be able to answer the question "when is Fred's birthday" than the question "what is significant about the 17th May" - that is just the way I am wired - and I don't know whether that is a common thing or not.
Perhaps this illuminates an aspect of learning that is important and reinforces my view that (in general) the way in which an individual best learns is - pretty much - unique to that individual and any attempt to 'standardise' teaching is inevitably going to fail most people most of the time.
