Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights ' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'
Life has obliged him to remember so much useful knowledge that he has lost not only his history but his whole original cargo of useless knowledge history languages literatures the higher mathematics or what you will - are all gone.