Most Useless Thing Memorized?

  • Most of the first book of the Iliad (in English)
  • A poem by Catullus in Latin (the mock elegy for Lesbia’s pet bird)
  • The game of Questions from Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead
  • Just about all of The Princess Bride, MP & the Holy Grail, and Young Frankenstein.
  • The old and no-longer-working international phone number of my best friend from high school (14 digits). If you knew my complete lack of ability to remember numbers, you’d understand that this is actually a big deal for me.
  • If, by Rudyard Kipling

Also: powers of every number up to ten to at least 3 or 4, powers of 2 up to about 20, the entire periodic table of elements, and various other geeky things that I can’t remember right now.

Ain’t I such a geek, though?:smiley:

gwendee, where is the Broadway Pizzeria you’re talking about? There’s one quite close to me, but that could easily just be a popular name.

Anywho…

I can recite Jabberwocky and most of the movie Labyrinth (but I’d have to be watching it).

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanconiosis

weird. I had to memorize that in the third grade. i think i can still do it, too.

my pointless fact: there are 17,901 trees on the campus of the university of kansas (this includes five gingkos).

i know lots of crap like this, because i worked for the information center at KU.

apparently the shift key on this computer only works intermittently. Does that count?

I remember that, a few years ago, my right knee stopped itching while some sort of pink plant was being shown on the screen at the IMAX theater I was in.

Why do I remember this? Because at the time I was sick of things ceasing to itch, and me not noticing exactly when it happens. This resulted in me paying much more attention to my knee than the movie.

I also know 40 digits of Pi and the full lyrics to Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping.

Ahem. I think you mean pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

“up up down down left right left right A B Select start”

CPE 1704 TKS :slight_smile:

I had to learn the alphabet backwards at the beginning of 4th grade. It had to be recited at such a speed that it was memorizing it backwards - not just thinking through it. It was a really great teacher that year, too. I’m curious what the lesson was in that exercise.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169

People who die by asfixiation usually present a fine mesh of sand colored points in their eyes. I’m a mechanical engineer major, why would I want to know that?

Around here, it’s used by idiots to try and pass a field sobriety test. :smiley:

For me, it’s a tie between the complete lyrics to “American Pie” and two lines of a Czech song meaning “I will tie your hands to the bed; I won’t appear in the room for half a day.” (I have to admit that I occasionally have the urge to go to Prague and run around saying that to random people, just to see what will happen.)

And I know lots of poetry by heart, but I wouldn’t really consider that “useless.”

The first eleven lines of the Aeneid. In Latin. With the proper scansion (elisions and everything). Not the English meaning of it, though. Go figure.

I would say the Attic Greek alphabet, except I’m taking Greek right now. :slight_smile:

Also: The four official languages of Singapore are Chinese, English, Malay, and Tamil, and that Mandarin is not a dialect of Chinese. (Still mad that the judges botched that last part. :D)

The Krebs cycle. 3 times. And I always look it up in a book or on the net when I need to know some particular feature.

Shheeeese! The wasted brain power. I need all I have!

Not that I care to write it down in its entirety but I can name
Monty Python’s long forgotten composer

Johann Gambolputtydevonausfern…

and I taught it to my older brother and he still remembers it 25 years later!

The 1995 Dallas Cowboys starting lineup. Offense, defense and special teams.

I adore that movie.

Will Clark of the San Francisco Giants hit .333 and had 111 RBI in 1989.

He also hit a home run in his first major leage at-bat in 1986 against the Astros, but I can’t recall if it was Mike Scott or Nolan Ryan pitching. I think it was Ryan.