I've had the same thing. It was impossible for me to remember complex mathematical equations in school until I figured out how to derive them myself. That didn't help me with integration, sadly.
Same with history: years are meaningless. What's interesting is how historical events follow from earlier events and lead to later events.
I strongly identify with the parent comment: I have poor rote learning of isolated facts, but strong spatial abilities (sporting and visualization), relational memory and explanatory insight through the implied graph of connections.
When I was young, I played with construction toys (Lego, Meccano) and board games, including Snakes and Ladders (Chutes & Ladders in the US). Later, when learning history, I found I was not remembering dates by their year number, but visualizing their position in the decade and century on the zig-zag of the S&L board. I implicitly grew a spatial layout of multiple centuries, often with certain viewpoints that made sense for topics of study. I excelled in history because of my relational understanding laid over this 3D spatial view of the world timeline.
Perhaps you can guess my field of academic specialization and the sweet-spot in my career as a programmer? ... physics degree, then 3D graphics and information visualization.
> Same with history: years are meaningless. What's interesting is how historical events follow from earlier events and lead to later events.
That's also how I learned what history I know. The trouble with that is not knowing how differently themed events are positioned relative to each other in time. For example, I don't know how events of political history linked to events of computer history.
Same with history: years are meaningless. What's interesting is how historical events follow from earlier events and lead to later events.