The Memory Palace (4 page)

Test Yourself on Shakespeare

* What play did Shakespeare write after Titus Andronicus?
* What play comes before Henry VIII?
* What play comes after Romeo and Juliet?
* What play comes next after Much Ado About Nothing?
* What play destroys our beautiful Merchant of Venice?
* What play comes before you getting hit in the face with a tail?
* What play comes before Othello?
* What play comes after Timon of Athens?
* What is the 14th play on our journey?
* After getting off the bus, what is our next play?
* What is 11 plays after Richard II?
* What comes after The Merry Wives of Windsor?
* What play does our final Twelfth Knight have to battle?
* What is 2 plays after Romeo and Juliet?
* Which came first, Hamlet or Macbeth?

Shakespeare Answers

* Richard III
* The Tempest
* Midsummer Night's Dream
* Henry V
* Henry IV Part 1
* Coriolanus
* Measure for Measure
* Macbeth
* Merchant of Venice
* Pericles
* Julius Caesar
* Henry IV Part 2
* Troilus and Cressida
* The Life and Death of King John
* Hamlet

Test Yourself on Dickens

* What was Dickens' last (and unfinished) novel?
* What was his first?
* What comes after Nicholas Nickleby?
* What comes before the mouse with the beak?
* What comes 2 novels after Hard Times?
* What comes before Our Mutual Friend?
* What comes after Barnaby Rudge?
* What is 3 novels after The Cricket on the Hearth
* What comes before The Chimes?
* What was Dickens' 11th novel?

Dickens Answers

* The Mystery of Edwin Drood
* The Pickwick Papers
* The Old Curiosity Shop
* David Copperfield
* A Tale of Two Cities
* Great Expectations
* A Christmas Carol
* The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
* Martin Chuzzlewit
* Dombey and Son

How Well Did You Do?

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TAKING IT FURTHER

"Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail."
- John Donne

Your journey has just begun.

Sherlock Holmes says, in the short story Five Orange Pips, that one must keep their little brain attic stocked with only the absolutely necessary furniture, with the rest being available in the lumber room of their library. Sherlock Holmes was wrong. Here's the great secret: It is ALL absolutely necessary! The more you know, the more connections you can make. The more you know, the more you
can
know. Your foundations are greater. The more knowledge you have in your head onto which you can hang new information, the easier it will be to learn new things.

You now have perhaps your first spatially-organized entry in your mental library of facts. One little journey later, you've memorized William Shakespeare's 37 plays. Another little mind-waltz, and you've installed Charles Dickens' 20 novels.
Your job has just begun.
What's stopping you from creating more journeys? It's simply a matter of how many you want. 10 more, 50 more, 100 more?
Oh, THINK of the possibilities!

For several years I have been dreaming about the wonderful future of neuroprosthetics. Get a microchip, insert it into your brain, and install new knowledge. It's the cartoon-ish idea of simply swallowing a book to learn new things.

The surprising reality, once you learn the Memory Palace Technique, is that we don't need any new hardware.

In your head sits the world's most powerful computer.

You just need to learn how to use it.

You just learned how to use it.

RECOMMENDED READING

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
- Austin Phelps

Remember, Remember
By Ed Cooke
Why? This book contains more stories like our Shakespeare one above to teach you the US Presidents, the entire British monarchy timeline, UK Prime Ministers, and the map of Europe. This man is a big name on the competitive memory championship scene, and his book is brilliant. It's Ed Cooke's work that inspired me to write this. Highly recommended!

Moonwalking With Einstein
by Joshua Foer
Why? Josh Foer went from audience-member to memory champion in 12 months. The skills you need to compete with the best in the world can be learned by anyone (you've learned some of them in this very book already) and Josh set out to test that theory. He was trained by Ed Cooke (see book above), and shares his journey in Moonwalking With Einstein, a title taken from one of his own crazy mental images.

OTHER INFORMATION TO LEARN

Geological Time Periods

Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Carboniferous
Permian
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Paleocene
Eocene
Oligocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Pleistocene
Recent

Presidents of the United States of America

George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison
John Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama

The Ten commandments

Thou shalt have no other gods before me
No false idols, ok?
Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain
Don't forget to keep the Sabbath holy
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's house

Seven Deadly Sins And Their Opposing Virtues

Lust - Chastity
Gluttony - Temperance
Greed - Charity
Sloth - Diligence
Wrath - Patience
Envy - Kindness
Pride - Humility

10 Longest Rivers in the World

Nile
Amazon
Mississippi-Missouri-Red Rock
Yangtze
Ob
Yellow
Yenisei
Parana
Irtish
Zaire

10 Tallest Mountains in the World

Everest
K2
Kangchenjunga
Lhotse
Makalu
Cho Oyu
Dhaulagiri
Manaslu
Nanga Parbat
Annapurna

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria

10 Most Populated Countries

China
India
United States
Indonesia
Brazil
Pakistan
Nigeria
Russia
Bangladesh
Japan

10 Countries by Size

Russia
Canada
United States of America
China
Brazil
Australia
India
Argentina
Kazakhstan
Sudan

'Best Picture' Oscar Winning Movies since 1928

1927-28 - Wings
1928-29 - Broadway Melody
1929-30 - All Quiet on the Western Front
1930-31 - Cimarron
1931-32 - Grand Hotel
1932-33 - Cavalcade
1934 - It Happened One Night
1935 - Mutiny on the Bounty
1936 - The Great Ziegfeld
1937 - The Life of Emile Zola
1938 - You Can't Take It With You
1939 - Gone With the Wind
1940 - Rebecca
1941 - How Green Was My Valley
1942 - Mrs Miniver
1943 - Casablanca
1944 - Going My Way
1945 - The Lost Weekend
1946 - The Best Years of Our Lives
1947 - Gentlemen's Agreement
1948 - Hamlet
1949 - All the King's Men
1950 - All About Eve
1951 - An American In Paris
1952 - The Greatest Show on Earth
1953 - From Here to Eternity
1954 - On the Waterfront
1955 - Marty
1956 - Around the World in 80 Days
1957 - The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 - Gigi
1959 - Ben-Hur
1960 - The Apartment
1961 - West Side Story
1962 - Lawrence of Arabia
1963 - Tom Jones
1964 - My Fair Lady
1965 - The Sound of Music
1966 - A Man for All Seasons
1967 - In the Heat of the Night
1968 - Oliver
1969 - Midnight Cowboy
1970 - Patton
1971 - The French Connection
1972 - The Godfather
1973 - The Sting
1974 - The Godfather Part II
1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1976 - Rocky
1977 - Annie Hall
1978 - The Deer Hunter
1979 - Kramer vs Kramer
1980 - Ordinary People
1981 - Chariots of Fire
1982 - Gandhi
1983 - Terms of Endearment
1984 - Amadeus
1985 - Out of Africa
1986 - Platoon
1987 - The Last Emperor
1988 - Rain Man
1989 - Driving Miss Daisy
1990 - Dances With Wolves
1991 - The Silence of the Lambs
1992 - Unforgiven
1993 - Schindler's List
1994 - Forrest Gump
1995 - Braveheart
1996 - The English Patient
1997 - Titanic
1998 - Shakespeare in Love
1999 - American Beauty
2000 - Gladiator
2001 - A Beautiful Mind
2002 - Chicago
2003 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004 - Million Dollar Baby
2005 - Crash
2006 - The Departed
2007 - No Country for Old Men
2008 - Slumdog Millionaire
2009 - The Hurt Locker
2010 - The King's Speech
2011 - The Artist