Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0476: Learn the history of South Africa

Episode Date: January 4, 2016

Jason asks about memorizing dates and facts from the history of South Africa. I present a general timeline and some sample mnemonics for this project. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 476. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Jason asked a question about memorizing facts about South African history. Jason is studying a particular period in the history of South Africa and he wants to be able to use a memory palace to contextualize the facts, dates, and names as he continues to learn more and more details.

So Jason, what I'm going to suggest that you do in learning the South African history is actually based on some things that I've been talking about recently in pretty much all of the last few episodes. In particular, using environments to distinguish different parts of your memory palace, as I mentioned in the previous episode where Gretchen asked about memorizing the dates of a war and what's going on during a particular period of time. Now, in your case, I think it's most interesting to separate the different time periods of South African history based on who's sort of in charge of the Cape and of South Africa in general. So in this episode, I'm going to mention about 10

different major events in South African history, and then who owns South Africa or where the ownership changes in South Africa during those events, and we'll use a different environment in your memory palace to represent those different times. And of course, for everyone who's listening who doesn't know about what environments are or what a memory palace is, masterofmemory.com slash start will fill you in on that stuff. So Jason, you want to create a memory palace with enough space to include all of the, you know, facts and stuff that you want to include in your palace. It should be a linear palace that goes from beginning to end. And for the purpose of this episode, let's just go from 1652 to 1961.

These are our major events in South African history that I want to cover in this episode. So first of all, we have 1652, and we have the Dutch establishing a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope. And the Cape, of course, is going to keep coming up if you know anything about South African history. Now, I would suggest that while the Dutch are in charge of South Africa, or of the Cape in this case, you're going to want snow. So imagine that from 1652, where you mark the start of your South African history in our current palace, imagine that there's snow from the marker that you place there, which for me, incidentally, would be a jack-o'-lantern to represent the year 52. And from that jack-o'-lantern to 95, which is our next, you know, big event,

we'll have it snowing. So let's say you're in your own house. At the front door, you have a jack-o'-lantern. And then after a couple of rooms, you have 95, which is a bell. So we have 1652 with the jack-o'-lantern, and then it's snowing until we reach a bell. Now the bell is the number 95, and this is actually 1795, so you want two whole rooms in your memory palace to represent how long that time was. But from 1652 to 1795, it's snowing, representing that the Dutch are in charge. And then from 95 onward, after the bell, it's underwater. Everything in your palace is underwater. So we've started a new era here, and Great Britain is in charge of the Cape of Good Hope from 1795 on. Now, one of the events that happens while Great Britain is in charge is that they annex the Cape Colony in 1806, and the object for that is a sage leaf. So you might imagine that Great

Britain is grabbing a sage leaf for their tea or something while they're underwater, but Great Britain's still kind of in charge of the area. Then also, something that's significant, I would say, is that diamonds are discovered in South Africa in 1867, which is chalk. So the number for the object peg for the number 67 is chalk. So diamonds are discovered, but that's still while Great Britain is kind of in charge of things, and it's still underwater. So you have underwater, you have chalk, you have diamonds, and it's some particular place in your house. Next, we have the Anglo-Zulu War, but the Zulus don't win. They don't gain independence. That's in 1879, and we're still underwater. So that war happens in 79, and it's a cube. So imagine an ice cube to represent the war, but we're still

underwater. The Brits are still in charge. Next, we have something interesting. For about 20 years, we have the Boer Wars from 1880 to 1902. And during that time, the Boer Republics are actually in charge. So imagine fire from 1880, and my marker for 80 is a vase, to 1902, and my marker for 2 is a snowball. And during that time, the house is on fire. So from, let's say there's one room, and at the beginning of the room, you have 80 with a vase, and at the end of the room, going to the next room, you have 02, which is 1902, and that's a snowball.

That whole room is on fire. So if you store anything in that room, anything between 1880 and 1902, you'll know that it's the sort of wars, the Boer Wars, and the Boer Republics are in charge there because the whole room is on fire during that era. Now going to the next room, let's say I'm thinking of the house that I'm in right now. There is a snowball that ends the Boer Wars where everything's on fire. And in 1902, from that snowball, we're going up a staircase. And in this room or this staircase area, the British are in charge again because they won the Second Boer War. So now, of course, we're underwater again. As you go up the stairs, there's a flood and everything is underwater.

So we're swimming up the stairs between 1902 with the snowball at the bottom of the stairs to 1910 with the dice at the top of the stairs leading to the bedroom. Now, this is kind of interesting. That's just eight years where Great Britain is in charge again. Everything between 1902 to 1910 is under British control. It's all underwater. But then when we get to the top of the stairs, the next room, which starts with the dice, is very sunny. There's no water. There's no fire. There's no snow. It's bright and sunny. And that represents that we now have the Union of South Africa, where South Africa has some autonomy. So 1910 is where that happens, and that's represented by the

dice. You'll remember the 10 that way. So anything after 1910 is in the sun, representing that this is an era of South Africa independence, or at least some autonomy. Now, South Africa finally becomes a republic in 1961, where you can imagine a jet that's signing a constitution, and South Africa becomes a republic in 1961. And it's still sunny both before and after that. Everything in the room that starts with the dice is sunny, because South Africa is kind of its own government at that point. So there we have it, a memory palace that we've created or that you can create based on this episode that represents many major events in South African history where you can both remember the years based on the object pegs that we've placed throughout the palace and who's in charge of South Africa at

any given time based on the current environment of the palace. Now, for those listeners who think that they just heard an entire episode in Yiddish or something because they don't understand what I'm talking about with the memory palaces and the object pegs, don't understand why things are underwater or why there's a sage leaf when Great Britain annexes the Cape Colony in 1806, I would encourage you to go to masterofmemory.com slash start for a full starter guide on how these techniques work and what it is that I'm talking about in these episodes. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.