Our chemistry teacher made us memorise up to Argon with a song, that was literally just him singing the 1/2 letter names of all the elements. HHeLiBeBCNOFNe...
It was on a poster on the wall in every lesson. It was in the textbook. It was printed on the exam papers.
I've no idea why he tried to make us do that, and the annoying thing is I can still remember a good chunk of it 30 years later. I could have been using that chunk of my brain for something useful.