I want to come up with a list of short lists. I’ve memorized the seven wonders of the ancient world and the ten commandments. What other short lists are there that might be good to have in long-term memory?
I’ll start:
-Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
-Ten Commandments
-Seven Deadly Sins
And two more:
-Seven Mercury Astronauts
-Seven Dwarves
http://listverse.com/ specializes in this sort of thing.
I like
Kubler-Ross’s five Stages of Grief
Original 13 US colonies
The six wives of Henry VIII and their fates
The ten provinces and three territories of Canada
George Carlin’s seven dirty words you can never say on television (and, I guess, a new list of how many you can hear now just on South Park)
The 8 rules of Fight Club
George Orwell’s 6 rules for effective writing 6 Rules for Effective Writing from George Orwell | The Best Article Every Day
What about some world geography?
10 longest rivers
10 tallest mountains
10 most populated countries
5 most spoken languages
The numbers 10 and 5 are arbitrary - you decide how many you want to remember.
Charles
Good stuff. . . I remember the 6 wives results from the old “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”
If we define a “short list” as 50 items or fewer, then we can add US Presidents and State Capitols. Any other lists?
I like all the suggestions so far. Let’s come up with ten or twenty more and make it a memory challenge.
-English Kings and Queens?
-Roman Emperors?
-Current Supreme Court Justices?
-Books of the Bible?
-Shakespeare Plays in chronological order?
-cvstuart
Or, it might be fun to come up with a Top Ten List of short lists and have that as the memory challenge. What might be included in that?
-cvstuart
How about this as a fairly doable challenge (10 lists and keeping it at ten items or fewer for each)? Can anyone think of something that might replace one of these?
Ten and Under
-Ten Commandments
-Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
-Seven Deadly Sins
-Seven Dwarves
-Six wives of Henry VIII and their fates
-Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief
-Five longest rivers
-Five tallest mountains
-Five most populated countries
-Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics
-cvstuart
P.S. I had success using a baseball diamond for the Ten Commandments (with a designated hitter on the bench) and for the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I’m going to continue to use it and see if there’s some limit to re-using baseball positions as a loci.
6 official languages of the United Nations
7 Heavenly Virtues (in contrast to the 7 deadly sins)
9 circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno
Not sure why this post got bumped to the new articles list. But here are a few more.