I want to remember historical event-dates, generally. For each century I intend to create a memory palace, each with 10 rooms to represent decades, each with ten locus objects to represent years. For example:
Boston Tea Party (1773):
17 → my local park
7 → northwest playground in the park
3 → the slide in the northwest playground
In the shinyness of the slide I see shiny tea, spilling down the slide (so I can access “Boston Tea Party” from “slide”)
In the background of the Boston Tea Party, on a ship, I see men pouring tea down that same slide (so I can access “slide” from “Boston Tea Party”)
With time, as I add more events, I think the slide will become synonymous with 1773, giving me random access to the events 1773, rather than linked list access. In other words, you can ask me what happened in 1773 and I can immediately recall the Boston Tea Party, rather than having to traverse my MP first. Also, vice versa, you can ask me about the Boston Tea Party and I can immediately tell you it was in 1773, rather than having to traverse my MP first.
Q: Is what I wrote in the last paragraph just wishful thinking? If I really want random access to events am I, in fact, better off combining my MP with a PA (e.g., 17 → dog (subject); 73 → combs (action); the slide (locus object); seeing comb marks in the slide)
I really don’t want to incur the overhead of spinning up a PA system and crowding my locus object more if the system isn’t going to do much for me.
You don’t NEED to use a Memory Palace for everything
If you do want to create one for each century, I would make each one a different color and would use the art and decor of the time period if I were you.
Depending on how many dates or events you want, you create the appropriate rooms that way and in each room, place scene of that historical event happening like a holographic movie.
But I do think a memory palace is the right structure here. My question is more about adding a year number indexing system (via PA) on top of the MP structure and whether it’s worth it.
In my view, the major system works best for dates. Since you need to memorize particicular dates and associate the event to them, I would make the palace, rooms and place a particular amount of events per room.
Example: a room can be used for 4 events or 6, depending on use of all room sides to include ceiling and floor OR 10 “sides” depending on if you want to use the corners as well.
Hi,
If you are looking at remembering historical events throughout the decades, where is your focus going to be - just American or will you include Europe, Eastern etc.
Definitely worth reading chapter 2 of Lynne Kelly’s Memory Craft where she does a memory journey through the entire planet’s history.
I have managed to memorise all the kings and queens of England and Uk from Egbert of Wessex to Elizabeth 2 with their reigning dates using a combination of my regular supermarket as loci and Derren Brown’s version of the Major system (I found this in Tricks of the Mind).
I’ve read her posts here in the forums. They informed some of the idea I cycled through in Historical timeline memory: my proposed system. I’ve since been convinced to not worry so much about the meta-structure (across centuries) and just get each individual century palace correct (10 rooms, with 10 locus objects each).
I just did the same thing with English/British monarchs! I went back to Egbert as well. Except, this was before I had memory palaces. So I just memorized using songs:
This little book is great, has dates,images and a summary of their reign - character events etc - so I’ve started to add hooks now to each monarch - thought it was apt in this platinum jubilee year!
I’ve been looking for a memorable set of images to represent each of them. Their images on Wikipedia don’t work for me. They’re all too similar. Ideally, I’d have a great set of caricatures which are not too caricatured and represent something significant about each monarch. I’ve found some stuff, but nothing spectacular:
I definitely like the catoon versions - they do have Alfred the Great now but apart from Aethelred the Unready and Canute most of the pre- Norman kings aren’t that well knoen even in the Uk
