Extraordinary World Records That Prove The Human Body And Mind Is Capable Of Anything

Learning German in about two hours
For some people, learning one language was hard enough, thank you very much. Being bilingual is only a dream. But maybe we'd all speak multiple languages if it came as easily as it did to Ramón Campayo, a champion of memorization.Deutsche Welle says in 2003 the Spaniard was traveling to the World Championship of Memorization which was being held in Munich. He had nothing to do on the flight and decided it might be fun to be able to give his speeches in the attendees' native language, so he busted open a book and spent the next two hours (or, as he quickly corrects the interviewer, 1 hour and 40 minutes) learning a brand-new language. More than a decade later he was in Germany for vacation, and he claims he still remembered all of it. He says his trick is to memorize all the important words in the dictionary and associate them with a visual image in his mind. Simple, right?It might seem like an impossible feat, but Campayo is used to doing crazy things with his memory. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 2009 he was able to memorize 68 binary numbers after looking at them for just 3 seconds. That's more than 22 numbers remembered per second. So it stands to reason he might be a whiz at taking in a new language as well. Some people are just too talented.