I highly recommend the Major System or phonetic number system. I really don’t see how anyone can memorize numbers without this, and it makes memorization so simple, but it does take lots of practice to become second nature.
I don’t usually bother with memorizing entire dates (the year is usually what you want) but when I do, I try to memorize it all as a number using the American (month day, year) style. This sometimes makes patterns memorable in themselves, such as D-Day (6-6-44 or 66 44 (there is no 60th month, so if you remember 66, you know it must mean June 6th) which has the phonetic mnemonic of “choo choo horror” (I imagine a choo choo train derailed and shot full of holes on the beaches of Normandy which were full of horror that day)).
For Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species date, I imagine Darwin as having a giant LiP (59) as he appeared in some unflattering cartoons of the time, although what he published was an enormous heLP (59) to biologists, forever changing the field no matter how much the fundamentalists today might yeLP (59). (I know it was the 19th century, so just remember the last two digits.) I find 2 or 3 images is better than one and creating a stupid little story as I illustrated here does the trick, but you must practice the story a few times.
I am listening to a lecture series on the Renaissance and when I heard the Zwingli died in 1531, I tried to imagine him being thrown into a MoaT (31), but not just any moat, a hoTeL (15) MoaT (31)… 1531.
Regarding centuries, I do try to create a single image for each one, using the first two digits, such as
nose for 20xx
tape for 19xx
dove for 18xx
dog for 17xx
touch for 16xx (I imagine a giant finger touching whatever the xx image is)
hotel for 15xx (I imagine a giant hotel lobby or the Bates Hotel)
tire for 14xx
dime for 13xx
tuna for 12xx …
etc.
For dates before the common era, instead of using the cumbersome BC or BCE, I just put a minus sign in front of the date in my mind (which also helps when making year calculations).
I try to create a scaffolding of other historical dates, tying one thing to the other. For example, across the Atlantic from Darwin, the Southern States began to secede from the Union in 1860, so I might remember that Origin of Species was published the year before this (I imagine some puffed up Southerner angry about Lincoln and Darwin (who were both born on the same day, by the way, February 12th, 1809). The Indulgence Crisis of 1517 occurred exactly 400 years before the 1917 entry of the United States into World War I. There is a lot of evidence that the more you link what you are learning to what you already know, the more likely you are to be able to recall both.
If there is a pattern to the numbers, this helps. The French Revolution occurred in 1789 which conveniently enough is 1 then 7-8-9. If you can count (and remember that it occurred in the 18th Century) then you can remember this. Using the linking pattern, you can also remember that this occurred 200 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (it’s jarring when you realize how much happens in just a few short centuries that we usually don’t link in our minds, but these jarring images make it easier to remember).
For historical figures, I only try to remember the year they died. For presidents, I only remember the year they left office (I had a great high school history teacher who made us remember them all). Knowing the death year or year the figure left office helps you to date them (and know whether they were alive or in office in a given year).
Finally, if you really want to learn and be able to recall these dates effortlessly, you have to do some brute force memorization - I memorize the fact AND the mnemonic at the same time using a flashcard type approach. The mnemonic helps months or years later if there is some confusion about the exact year or date since I can often reconstruct it (whereas a 37 can become a 38 or 39 or 47 fairly easy with the passage of time).
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