The Mandela effect is one very strange phenomenon that is becoming more and more popular and widespread in the world. We are talking about a lot of people who have very vivid memories of things, people or phenomena, and these memories differ from real facts.
This may refer to biographies of famous people, historical events, or even films. For example, a group of people is sure that in a movie scene with a policeman chasing a bandit, the latter shoots the policeman several times and misses. But in fact, there was no such thing in this scene at all and the bandit did not even have a pistol.
The Mandela Effect was discovered in 2010. Anomalous researcher Fiona Broome found that she was convinced that South African politician Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. According to her, she even saw a news report on TV.
In fact, Mandela was quite alive and well in 2010 and died only in 2013 from a respiratory illness in his home.
When Fiona Broome shared this strange fact with the public on the Internet, it turned out that a huge number of people were also convinced of Mandela's death in the 80s. And these people also had vivid memories of the detailed coverage of his death on the news, and someone even stated that they had read about it in school textbooks.
Later it turned out that a similar effect applies to many other things, but the first phenomenon was called the Mandela Effect.
Including a similar effect has been identified in geography. It turns out that many people have misconceptions about where this or that country is located, and even what form it is. In their opinion, these countries used to have a completely different location on the world maps than they do now.
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One of the striking examples is New Zealand. Without looking at the map, can you tell where this country is? Is it in northeast Australia or southeast? Or maybe west of it, or even east?
Correct answer - New Zealand lies in the extreme southeast of Australia, about 1200 miles from the mainland. But for many people, this answer seemed wrong, for many years, since childhood, they had completely different ideas about where New Zealand is located.
Where is New Zealand located? The map on the left is a misconception. On the map on the right - the real:
Some people believed that it lies much further south, and some confidently remembered that New Zealand is located practically off the coast of Australia and at the same time in the northeast.
One Reddit user described his point of view as follows:
Another Redit user, by his own admission, was completely shocked by this anomalous discovery.
The Mandela effect in geography touched not only New Zealand, but also some other countries, for example Sri Lanka. Again, check yourself, where do you think Sri Lanka is located? If you said it was south of India, then you are wrong. Sri Lanka is located southeast of India. But a huge number of people are sure that it is located strictly in the south.
The mystery of Sri Lanka was at one time discussed directly on the website The Mandela Effect.
The same applies to Cuba. Many people believe that it is much closer to Florida than to Mexico, and in fact, from Florida to Cuba, 228 km, and from Mexico to Cuba, 214 km.
Japan, too, in the opinion of many respondents was "out of place." All of them were sure that it was located much farther south and closer to China, but in fact it was north and closer to Russia.
Greenland is also lost on the map. Few people knew that it was very close to Canada (only 14 miles from the Canadian territories) and at the same time much larger than they thought. Greenland is about 21 times the size of Iceland.
One of the most unusual geographic phenomena of the Mandela Effect is the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It is a large land with an area of 61,022 km², with a rich history from the 12th century and its own culture, traditions and population.
The problem is that for many people this place never existed and they never saw it on their maps. These people claim that Spitsbergen appeared on the maps quite recently, and before that it was absent there.
The same goes for the Canadian territory of Nunuvut, which is not just some piece of land, but an area the size of France, Texas and California combined. Some people assure that they have never heard of this place or seen it on maps.
It may seem that all these mistakes are just the opinion of uneducated people, but this is far from the case. Similar misconceptions were characteristic of people who were well versed in geography.
These people were just generally convinced that the world used to look different. They saw it on maps in textbooks, on TV, and a number of other sources. And when they look at modern maps on the Internet, they can hardly believe what they see.
People who study the Mandela Effect are sure that the whole thing is in the so-called concept of the multiverse. According to it, we are surrounded by a huge set of parallel worlds with endless alternative versions of our reality. In some of them, for example, you do not like red, but green, while in other countries they have a different location on the map.
And if a person imperceptibly moves from one such reality to another, he may not even notice the differences and continue to live his life. But in his memories, at the same time, completely different facts about people or the location of countries are preserved.
The article was prepared by the researcher of anomalous phenomena Brent Swanser