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.
I too spent a huge amount of my childhood with Lego and board games.
I never became great with history, but found my way to computer vision and ML through a background in mech engg. (basically applied physics)
Still in school, so don't have an end to my story, but it is great to know others whose thought process coincides so well with mine.
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.