WordPress: Display recently updated posts & pages

Want to show a list of most recently updated posts and pages in WordPress? You can add a list of recently updated posts/pages by adding a code snippet to your WordPress theme in any template file where you want it to appear. Add this to one your templates to display a list of the posts and pages that were updated last.

<?php
     $today = current_time('mysql', 1);
     $howMany = 5; //Change to show desired number of entries
     if ( $recentposts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_modified_gmt < '$today' ORDER BY post_modified_gmt DESC LIMIT $howMany")):
?>
<h2><?php _e("Recent Updates"); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php
foreach ($recentposts as $post) {
     if ($post->post_title == '') $post->post_title = sprintf(__('Post #%s'), $post->ID);
     echo "<li><a href='".get_permalink($post->ID)."'>";
     the_title();
     echo '</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>

Source: WP Snipp