Even those things are just misunderstandings. Nixon resigning might convince someone they filed articles of impeachment, and the 1980 Winter Games had a weird playoff format where there was no set “Gold medal game” at all.
I have zero memory of Tinkerbell in the Disney intro. Never heard that one before.
Human memory is insanely unreliable. You cannot rely on your memory for stuff like this. Our memories are very good at feelings and emotions, and they’re not at all bad for facts, but they fuck up narrative.
It certainly does in Russia (or at least, it did until the current unpleasantness with Ukraine):
For those wondering, that’s not a Russian knock-off of McDonald’s; the chain really does spell its name Макдоналдс, or “Macdonalds” in transliteration.
The whole Mandela thing is easy enough to explain. In the 1980s there was a lot of talk about a famous South African anti-apartheid protestor who was murdered in prison (Steven Biko) - there was a movie (Cry Freedom - Wikipedia) and a hit song (Biko (song) - Wikipedia ). If you only had space in your memory for one story about “South African anti-apartheid protestor” in the 1980s, you’d have “Steven Biko” there, with the notation “dead.” A few years later, when you tried to put another South African anti-apartheid protester in your memory (Nelson Mandela), it’s pretty easy to see that the notation “dead” might have carried over to the wrong guy.
I noted in his obit thread from last year that I thought Johnny Nash had died 50 years ago from cancer. I quickly realized that I had simply made a few reasonable but wrong inferences (that his 15 minutes of fame had expired by the mid-70’s and not him, his biggest hit I Can See Clearly Now was NOT a product of a fatal diagnosis but just a cute but inconsquential pop song). So I can see (clearly now) how such things can happen.
Such an, or any, explanation, is only called for if one can demonstrate that, [in the OP’s word], “many” people mistook Steven Biko for Nelson Mandela. What I remember is that people were, shall we say, upset that someone like Nelson Mandela was rotting in the slammer. In particular, he was alive. As for pop culture, a few years later, an awesome movie like The Rock had Sean Connery say, “Well, I’ve been in prison longer than Nelson Mandela. Maybe you want me to run for President.”
It’s certainly only called for in the case of someone who claims to remember that Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. If someone doesn’t claim that, then no explanation is needed.
is that people were, shall we say, upset that someone like Nelson Mandela was rotting in the slammer. In particular, he was alive. As for pop culture, a few years later, an awesome movie like The Rock had Sean Connery say, “Well, I’ve been in prison longer than Nelson Mandela. Maybe you want me to run for President.”