I love dates.

No, not the dried fruit, but the four-digit numbers that mark important years in history. I love remembering them. I love guessing the year of a song or a movie. I love knowing the years of Kentucky Derby winners and presidential elections and 100-meter champions at the Olympics. I simply love dates.

I know, I know, a million educational studies have shown that rote memory — like recalling names and dates — isn’t the best way to learn something. But dates are important in MORE