While his family members could recall the highlights of cross-country road trips, only Williams remembered the minutiae, too — the names of motels, what the family ate for lunch, each day's itinerary.

Almost anything that had happened to him was neatly catalogued and easily retrievable in his head, and through no special effort on his part.

"It was just stuck there," said Williams, 51, a radio news reporter for Midwest Family Broadcasting in La Crosse.

Only recently has Williams come to understand the rarity of his abilities.

Since June of 2006, neuroscientists at the University of California-Irvine have been studying him for clues to the human memory. He is one of only three known cases of what researchers call hyperthymestic syndrome, or an extraordinary recall for life events.

"These people have almost instant access to their personal recollections of things they did on any particular day, as well as what prominent news events happened that day," said Dr. James McGaugh, a leading memory researcher at the University of California-Irvine who has interviewed Williams extensively. "It's accessible to them much like the memory of what you did this morning is accessible to you."

If neuroscientists can learn why Williams has a superior memory, they may be able to figure out why the rest of us don't — and whether anything can be done about that, McGaugh said.

'Always been this way'

Ask Williams the date Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki on "The Tonight Show," and he instantly nails it: Dec. 17, 1969. He quickly adds that it was a Wednesday and that Florence Henderson also was a guest. He had stayed up late that night to watch the show.

Sometimes he remembers a date by first recalling events in his life. Other times, the date pops into his head first and leads to personal recollections.

He remembers the day "Hair" opened on Broadway — April 29, 1968 — because his grandfather died that day. On July 29, 1974, the day Mama Cass died, he was in the back of his parents' car driving through Yellowstone National Park.

"It's amazing to see how people are responding to me now, because I've always been this way," Williams said. "It's not the sort of thing that comes up in general conversation, so until people started pointing it out, how was I to know I wasn't like everyone else?"

The middle child of three boys, Williams describes his childhood in Prairie du Chien as typical, yet it quickly becomes apparent he's being modest.

Williams started kindergarten early, skipped first grade and entered second grade at age 5. As an eighth-grader, he won the state spelling bee and represented Wisconsin at the national bee, where he was eliminated in the fourth round. (For the past 29 years, he has been the official pronouncer for the state bee.)

On the playground, classmates taunted him with jeers of "Are you a genius?" Small in stature, Williams pursued quiz bowls instead of sports. He loved television, which is one reason why he is just as likely today to know the date "I Dream of Jeannie" premiered as he is to know the name of President Carter's Interior secretary.

He attended UW-La Crosse, graduating with a mass communications degree. He has been a radio news reporter most of his career.

A neat parlor trick

To the Williams family, Brad Williams' unusual memory has always been impressive in a parlor trick sort of way, but, until recently, it hadn't dawned on them it could be scientifically important.

"We're not big self-promoters. Brad doesn't make a big deal out of a lot of things," said his mother, Virginia Williams of Prairie du Chien, a retired sixth-grade teacher. His father, the late Griff Williams, was a quality control specialist at 3M and longtime head of the Crawford County Historical Society.

Family members say there was no "Eureka!" moment — they simply realized over time that Brad could recall things no one else could.

"Within reason, he can remember what happened on every day of his life," said his younger brother, Eric, 45, a screenwriter in Glendale, Calif. "The asterisk is that he can't really remember what happened before he was 5, or if the day was really uneventful."

In February of 2006, the journal Neurocase reported on "A.J.," a 40-year-old California woman known only by her initials who could instantly recall details of her past with astonishing specificity. McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California-Irvine had been studying her for more than five years, and her case was the first of its kind to be recorded and chronicled in scientific research.

Eric Williams saw A.J.'s story and contacted McGaugh about his brother. Within months, Brad Williams was undergoing memory tests. Currently, researchers are studying brain scans of A.J. and Williams, and Williams said he has agreed to be hooked up to electrodes to see what parts of his brain light up when he answers questions.

After Williams came forward, a third person — an Ohio man — also surfaced. McGaugh thinks there are more people out there with superior autobiographical memory, although "not a huge number."

What sets the three apart is that they use no mnemonic devices — memory aids such as rhymes or visual imagery — to create associations among facts, McGaugh said. Their recall is instant, deeply personal and naturally occurring.

To confirm the accuracy of Williams' personal recollections, family members secretly supplied McGaugh with a jumbo box of family memorabilia that included scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs and event programs. Researchers used obscure items to develop questions they could spring on Williams.

"For people who haven't met him and are skeptical, that's the biggest hurdle — convincing them that it's not a scam," Eric Williams said.

Not a savant

Another common question is whether Williams is an autistic savant. He's not. The term refers to people with autism who have extraordinary mental abilities in one or more areas but also severe developmental or mental handicaps. Williams is fully functional, and his memory capabilities have limits, McGaugh said.

"If I ask him about any date during his lifetime, he can give me the day of the week instantly," McGaugh said. "If I ask him the day of a week in 1532, it would take him some time to compute it. An autistic savant doesn't care when the date is."

A.J., the female with superior memory, has told researchers that her memories sometimes torment her, arriving uninvited and refusing to leave. Williams said his memory is more genial.

"It's not a problem for me," he said. "Mine is more voluntary."

Asked if he believes his talent is God-given, Williams shrugged. "If it is, I haven't found the reason for it. It's an ability that doesn't seem to have a practical application all that often."

Williams thinks his strong memory must be genetic, as he has done nothing in particular to develop it. He's not an incessant list maker or diary keeper, although some of his comments suggest he saves a lot of things from his past.

After declining to let a reporter see his apartment, Williams, who has never married, was asked what his home environment would say about him. He laughed. "Mine would say don't bring over visitors. I get lazy about getting rid of things I don't need."

He collects unusual hats and costumes, some of which end up in the community theater productions and improv comedy shows he takes part in. He keeps ticket stubs of movies and plays he attends and has a stash of videos, including old episodes of "Jeopardy!"

His own appearance on the syndicated game show in 1990 didn't go so well. He put up a good fight, answering correctly every question in the category "1984 movies," but the other categories, like "Snakes" and "Words that start with kh" didn't fall in his favor and he finished second.

Two years ago, Williams had the opportunity for a do-over of sorts. He met Ken Jennings, who holds the record for the longest winning streak on "Jeopardy!" The two agreed to a bar trivia contest. Williams prevailed in that one.

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Eric Williams, a screenwriter in Glendale, Calif., is filming a documentary, "Unforgettable," about his younger brother Brad's ability to recall nearly every day of his life.
To view a trailer and scenes from the documentary, go to www.unforgettabledoc.com.