Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0568: Reprise: A World War I timeline to memorize in 15 minutes

Episode Date: May 11, 2016

Reprise: A World War I timeline to memorize in 15 minutes 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.

Hey guys, this is Timothy, and I'm publishing a book. Now, this may not be new news to all of you, but I bring it up because it's temporarily changing some things here on the show. We're going to be running a series of reprise episodes for the next few weeks due to my need to focus exclusively on this writing project. The book is going to cover absolutely everything about language hacking that I've learned from years of working directly with fluency coaching students and native speaking coaches to see what truly works and gets amazing results. It's going to be a high-end book with the hardcover copy priced at around $40, and that's if I can keep it as short as I'd like to keep it.

But as podcast listeners, you can actually get a free digital copy of the book if you sign up early. Just go to Spanishin1month.com, and you'll be on the early bird list to get access to the book the day that it's released. Meanwhile, for now, enjoy this rerun of one of my favorite episodes from the last few months. 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. This is a follow-up episode to episode 438, which presented a timeline of World War II with two essential dates per year so that you can memorize a timeline of World War II, if you have number mnemonics, in about 15 minutes. In this episode, I'll be presenting a timeline of World War I, and we have the same idea.

Two major dates per year, or two major events per year, with their months and the year involved. And if you have the number mnemonics from 1 to 12, you can basically memorize the timeline of World War I in about 15 minutes while listening to this episode. Something I'm specifically going to recommend is that you go straight from this episode to Hardcore History by Dan Carlin, it's another podcast, and look up his episode series on World War I called Blueprint to Armageddon. I find World War I really fascinating, and I would have benefited from

that series that I listened to one and a half times, actually. I'd have learned a lot more if I knew the basic events of World War I beforehand. And so that's what I'm going to remedy in this episode. But then after you memorize these dates and maybe quiz on them one or two times, go straight to Dan Carlin's podcast and listen to the World War I episodes. Your mind is going to be blown on the clash between the 19th century and the 20th century in World War I. Now, as popular as the World War II timeline was was in episode 438 and as much positive feedback as it got i thought i'd just present a very similar format in this episode but in a different area so what i'm going to do is i'm going to present the main events as i see them from a u.s perspective even though the u.s wasn't actually involved until halfway through the war. And so we'll go with a memory

palace of six general locations, each of which is divided into two smaller locations. And instead of using a house, for the World War I timeline, I'm going to use an airplane. So our six locations are the windshield, which is 1914, the cockpit, which is 1915, the storage above the passengers, the passengers' seats, the lavatory, you know, the bathroom in the back, which is going to be 1918, and then the tail of the airplane on the exterior for 1919. So starting at the beginning on the front of the plane, we'll actually start with the nose, but this goes with the general area of the windshield. So on the nose of the plane, Russia mobilizes to send troops in to defend Serbia from Austria-Hungary or from the central

powers. So there are two sides going on. There are the people in the center, basically Germany and their allies. And then there's Russia on the east There are the people in the center, basically Germany and their allies. And then there's Russia on the east allied with the people on the west. And those will be familiar names as well. But the big event is Russia mobilizing. And it mobilizes with a sock. And this is how the war starts. So the sock represents the seventh month or July. And Russia, the cold country, is on the exterior of the plane, which is cold, and is spreading a sock over the nose of the plane until it reaches the windshield.

So that's Russia starting to move their troops. And Russia was the first big military, the first big power to start sending a military in. So that's one of the most significant events at the beginning of the war, although the beginning of the war is very complicated, as you'll see when you go and listen to Dan Carlin's telling of the story. So Russia mobilizes in July of 1914. Then later that same year, very soon in August, Germany invades Belgium in order to get to France. So we're going to put some chocolate bells all over the windshield.

Germany is going to break into the windshield to get to France. But in order to do that, it has to break past these chocolate bells. So it's like chocolate kisses. And these chocolate bells represent Belgium. Germany thought that they'd just be, you know, little things that they could knock over rather than providing the resistance that they did. And that's when the War of the Western Front began. So they broke past the chocolate on the windshield to get into France. And the way that they did that in my telling of the story, which is, of course, nonsense, is that they're using a sofa. They're

picking up a sofa and smashing the chocolate with it in order to break in the windshield. And that represents August. So August is the eighth month. That's the sofa. Now we're inside the cockpit. It's very hard to choose specifically important dates during the huge war of the Western Front, which is just basically long battles that go over several months and just don't make any progress. But some interesting dates are Germany begins using gas bombs, or well, actually gas without the bombs at first, and you'll hear about that in Dan Carlin's episode, in April of 1915. So we're inside the cockpit, and there's gas coming out of the steering device.

So the steering device is emitting gas, and the gas that it's emitting looks like a blanket, and it wraps around the pilot like a sari, like an Indian sari. So that's the fourth month. Sari is gas. Next, imagine that the pilot, or actually the co-pilot, so that was the pilot being wrapped with the blanket. And now the co-pilot blows a whistle because they've just crashed through actually a boat that was in the sky. The airplane is unharmed, but they flew right through a ship that was in the sky. And that represents that Germany in May, so that's the whistle, that's the fifth month, Germany used a submarine to sink the British Lusitania. And there were a thousand people on board that craft with over a hundred Americans dying in that. And so, you know, that was a big deal. The Americans basically said,

Germany, you better stop using submarines against us or we're going to get into the war. And so Germany was very restricted on their submarine use after that point. So that was a significant event. So the whistle representing the sinking of the Lusitania. And then let's go into the storage above the passengers. So those doors that open and close on the storage, they're kind of wobbly. And you might imagine that you stuff a sock in to hold one of them open. And that sock that's being used to hold that thing open is basically just something I threw in there to represent one of the biggest and most gruesome battles on the Western Front in the First World War, and that is the Battle of the Somme.

And you don't necessarily have to remember that name, although you'll hear it a lot in Dan Carlin's episode. But basically, you know, it's just that was when that war started. And so you picture that sock there holding that thing open. And just imagine the French and the Germans and the British firing at each other just constantly, resulting in over a million casualties total. And so it was one of the bloodiest battles in history, and it lasted for several months. But July, represented by that sock, is when it started. But then if you look past that, inside the storage bins above the passengers' heads, there are some soap bars in there that are carved to look like really weird-looking tanks. And they're moving around in there.

And this represents, well, the soap is for, you know, September. 09 is the ninth month. And the British first started using tanks in September of 1916. Next, we're going to go to 1917, the next year, and we'll go down to the passenger seats. So 02 is a snowball. And so if you imagine, you know, the people in Russia just suddenly starting throwing snowballs at each other, that's the Russian Revolution. So it's cold in Russia again, and they start throwing snowballs at each other, and that's the Russian Revolution in February of 1917. Pretty significant event happening in the middle of the war and the Tsar being overthrown and everything. And then in April of 1917, so the Russians are throwing snowballs at each other in the front. And then under one of the seats, another sari is discovered,

another one of these blankets. And it's, you know, it's a sorry, so that represents April, but it's been attacking the undersides of the passengers' seats. And so the Germans are at it again. They're using their submarines again under the passengers' seats. And so the U.S. enters the war in April because of the German submarines. Now let's go back to the lavatory. You know, those folding doors that, you know, airplane bathrooms have? And so what's happening here is a semi-truck has been that represents that on one side, the war stopped. And actually, the war stopped with a peace treaty with Russia, between Germany and Russia, in March of 1918. So that's March.

The number three is represented by the semi-truck. And then if you go in the bathroom, there is a disembodied tooth that somebody just pulled out and dropped into the sink, and they plugged the sink, and the tooth is just floating in there. And that represents that all the fighting stopped in November, which is the 11th month ended in 11 of 1918, although the war isn't officially over because there hasn't been a treaty yet. That paperwork is going to go on for a long time. But the bloody tooth just kind of floating there in sort of limbo state in that sink represents that the Western Front, now that Russia is no longer fighting, the Western Front finally got their, you know, fighting finished with in November, the 11th month of 1918. Then finally, if we go to the tail of the plane, we have the Treaty of Versailles. And to think of this, think of a sage leaf that's clinging to the giant airplane tail.

This tiny leaf is clinging to this giant airplane tail and it's flapping around in the wind, barely hanging on. And that's the official end of the war. And that's kind of what Germany looked like after World War I because they were basically blamed for the whole war. Although if you listen to Dan Carlin's episode, you'll know it's not exactly the case. It's hard to blame anyone for the war. It was going to happen no matter what, according to most of the authorities at the time.

But Germany got all the blame, and so there they are, that little sage leaf kind of dangling off the back of the tail of the plane after the treaty is signed, ending the war, and telling Germany that they have to pay for all the damages. So yeah, that's World War I summed up in an airplane. And if any of this didn't make sense to you, all the way that we're using sage leaves and saris and snowballs to represent different months of the years, and the way that we've turned an airplane into a memory palace, go to masterofmemory.com slash start for a starter guide to see how these mnemonics work. It's completely free. You can just read the articles on the website and make them work for you. 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.