Ideas for memorizing history

General Memory Chat
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Hello!

I think I have a take on history memorization which i haven’t read or heard about before.
Therefore i wanted to share it and get some feedback on this technique.

I want to start a life long project of memorizing historical facts to expand my general knowledge which can make me more versatile in discussions and so on.

I have thought about the best way to approach this project and have read a bit about others approaches on this forum. I have then combined two approaches which i explain in this post. At last i might have an addition to the technique and to get feedback on this is the reason i posted.

The basic technique:

I will use a 3-digit major system to create every year i want to remember an historical event from (which in the end will be most years, at least for the 19th and 20th centuries).

I will then use Stockholm as my memory journey and the journey will act as a timeline. I will construct it in a way where i split Stockholm in 20 parts each representing one century (year 0-2000).
I will then place my 3 digit image for a specific year approximately where it belongs on the timeline for that century.

For example an event that happened year 1950 will be placed approximately halfway up the journey for the 20th century. So i will find a good loci halfway up and then place both the year image and the event image at the loci and make them interact with each other.

To get more control and grasp of when in time something happened i will also subdivide every century into 4 quarters. 00-25, 25-50 and so on. This will be done either by just placing milestones every 25 years or by using a distinction in the geographical placement of the locis for every quartier to separate them.

I suggest you read these two posts to get a better understanding of where i took the ideas from and incorporated them into this idea.

https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/some-thoughts-about-memorizing-history/84966/3?u=isak

The greatest problem with the technique presented above is that you only have one loci for a given year. Therefore you either only memorize a maximum of 1 event per year or you just keep memorizing new events interacting with the same image for the year and hope that when you hear a question about when an historical event happened you will recognize your image for this event and make the connection to the year image even though there are multiple images you will make that connection with.

This will result in it being hard for you to go the other way around and name all historical events you’ve memorized for a specific year.
It’s basically you won’t remember all different images connected to one image when you see the one image but you will recognize the one image every time you separately see one of the many images.

So lastly i had to solve this problem and i have come up with 2 ideas which i think neither unfortunately is flawless and therefore i need feedback.

My first new idea of maybe tweaking the technique a bit is using miniature memory palaces. I’ve read about miniature memory palaces and Lukasa and how you can create many loci using a normal object, like an apple. Therefore i thought i could use every image for a year as a miniature memory palace to place all historical events i want to memorize in. So for example a JBL (decoded 695) speaker could be my memory palace for all events that happened in 1695. I just create loci for each event i want to memorize and can add on more whenever i want.

There are a few problems with this approach:

  1. You probably can’t create unlimited loci on a speaker, in fact it might be hard creating more than 20. But will you really need to memorize more than 20 events for 1 year?

  2. You will have to create the images for the years so they will fit as miniature memory palaces. For example it might be hard to use different people as images for different years when a human body looks relatively similar.

  3. I haven’t tried the technique so i can’t confirm this but i think it might be harder to recall the connection between the event and when it happened because you only connected the event to a loci and not a loci and a image which you would have done if you didn’t use the miniature memory palace.

  4. I feel like this might interrupt having a timeline where you get a feeling for when everything happened because you have two layers of palaces. But i’m not sure​:thinking:

The second idea i came up with to solve this problem was to make mini routes around each image for the year and make it like additions to the big palace. Normally you only go thru the journey by the years and then when you want to extract events from a specific year you jump into the mini route around the year image and loci.

In the same way as the miniature memory palaces this solves the problem of needing to connect each event to the same year image, but it also solves some of the problems that came with the miniature memory palaces approach.

  1. You don’t have to create the year image so that it will fit as a miniature memory palace

  2. I think recall will be easier because when you get the event image in your head you will instantly connect it to the loci and then you can just see which year loci and image is close to it. I also think the feeling of having the timeline intact will be better then with miniature memory palaces because with this technique there is only one palace but with off routes. I think it is much better that way then needing to go into another palace.

The biggest drawback with this is that you still need to create a bunch of loci but you can’t hide them in the miniature palaces, instead you need to find them around the year loci.
You also need to be able to easily separate the year loci and the event loci and i think a good way to do this is just having the year images being huge and having significant locis (I would for example use a church or a museum in Stockholm) and then having the event locis placed around the significant year loci in normal loci places (sorry for using the word loci so much haha).

So finding space for so many big locis and also space for these routes around them will probably be the hardest part but i think it might work if i really use Stockholm well. I think the route technique is the way to go but it’s a lot of work and hopefully someone can help to better it.

Thanks for reading this book of a post and i hope there will be some feedback on my ideas which can help create something even better​:grinning:

Isak

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Are you sure this is a problem though? As long as the images are logical I don’t see an issue.

An example: The French Revolution. If you want to recall what year it started all you have to do is think of what object you might have used to represent it – for me that would probably be a guillotine. So you check your palaces for where the guillotine is, which probably springs to your mind right away. Let’s say you see it in Kungsträdgården: there is a coffee pot being guillotined over there by the cherry trees in front of a large cheering crowd, glass shattering and coffee flying everywhere. So you know it’s 1789.

The fact that the coffee pot also gets washed by a ton of people all wearing wigs, in a long line around the trees, handed from one to the next, that shouldn’t interfere with the previous scene since this is a separate scene that takes place on it’s own at another time in space (representing Washington becoming president of the United States in 1789).

So even if you have twenty scenes involving the coffee pot that represents 1789 at that locus over by the cherry trees, interference shouldn’t be an issue since the association normally goes from event → year.

On the other hand – like you mentioned – if you want to go the other way around there might be some issues. Listing off everything you know about a given year if you have twenty things memorized for that year, yeah you will probably miss a couple off the top of your head. Is that really a goal you have though? I have a hard time imagining a situation arising that would call for it, but perhaps I’m thinking a bit narrowly.

I don’t see an easy way to accomplish the exhaustive listing goal. I first thought that maybe adding a number signifier (telling you how many things you have stored at the loci) might work as an easy solution, so you know when to stop and if you missed any at least. But that would probably have some ghosting issues since you need to update and replace the signifier every time you add something new to the loci. What you suggest might work, but it seems like a lot of extra work.

Sorry if this didn’t help much, I just wanted to share my thoughts since I have a similar project going. Good luck!

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Thanks for the response!

The problem i was talking about is if you only use 1 loci for each year and place all events in that same loci but like in different times in space.

You are still doing the same thing as i’m doing using different locis for all events.

The only thing different i think is that i might use the big year locis and only use the year image on that loci so i instantly can travel to that specific loci when i’m after that year. When i’m after a event i go to the event and then just go to the big loci which should be right by it to get the year.

I don’t know how you would structure it but if i do as you said with using a journey with events and years in the same loci and just creating as many as you need for the year, it would interrupt the timeline approximation. Because if you have 20 events for 1 year and then 2 for another the timeline approximation will be off by quite a bit.

And it’s not that many more loci to do it my way. You only need one more loci per year.

As I said I think the structure of the big year loci and normal event locis makes it much easier to navigate through your palace then having x different events linked to different years in a long journey.

I know i won’t have great use of being able to tell everything that happened in a specific year. But i like the idea that i’m able to do it and that it isn’t that much more work and when it also creates a better palace i think it’s worth it.

Thanks again for the feedback and please respond if i misunderstood something or you have anything to add to the topic.

Good luck with your project

Isak

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I might have misunderstood you or been unclear, apologies if that’s the case. I’ll go bit by bit (if you don’t mind) and perhaps we’ll understand each other better :+1:

That is what I am talking about as well, and I’m not sure it’s a problem (except in the case of listing things off exhaustively).

I might have been unclear, but no. There’s only one locus for all events that took place that year (the trees for year 1789, or whatver spot you’ve chosen in your memory palace). The anchor object used to create a memorable scene is the same for all those events as well (the coffee pot, 7-8-9, letting you know the precise year). The formula being: year image, interacting with an event image, at the locus, in order to create something memorable, no?

Just to clear things up a bit:

  • To visit a specific year in your palace – if it doesn’t spring to mind automatically – you would more or less go to the correct street, then to the early/middle/end part of the street (depending on if the year is early/middle/late in the century), and then check that area for the object you have chosen for that three digit number with the major system (7-8-9 → c-f-p, coffe pot, for example, which is over by those cherry trees in my example).
  • To “view” a certain event on your timeline – if it doesn’t spring to mind automatically – you just think of possible associations you might have used for the event, and then scan what you think are the relevant streets for a scene involving the association.

Is this what you’re talking about as well?

I’m not sure what you mean here. How many scenes one locus contains doesn’t affect this. If you have one scene at the locus for 1788, and twenty scenes at 1789, that still leaves the same space between them as if you had only one scene at each. The distance between these two spots, in relation to the distance to other spots further away, is where you get the sense of awareness of time from. It all comes from the fact that the loci are spaced out to reflect the passing of time proportionally.

So what I was trying to get across is that the problem you mentioned with only having one locus per year is perhaps not much of a problem in reality. There is no interference between scenes, and as long as they are logical and memorable, you wouldn’t have to rely on hope to recognize things. A potential problem only arises if you need to list off all you know exhaustively, as discussed. But that issue is something you deal with for everything you know – you never really take inventory of all the things you know about something, unless it’s a specific list or something.

I’m not trying to talk you out of it though. A geography project I’m doing involves a part that brings a lot of extra work for a marginal gain (at best), but I’m still going for it just to see how it turns out, so I understand the feeling.

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Thanks for the breakdown. I realized after the first sentence in your post that i had misunderstood what you meant in your first response.

Now i see that you use the same technique as i thought i would go with first. I like that it saves a lot of work, but i think i might try it my way and go for the challenge. It might just be unnecessary, but i like the idea that i won’t have to hear a question to be able to find the answer. I like that i can review the full palace whenever and however i want.

Isak

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