As long as we’re doing that, I always have to remind myself that South America is mostly east of North America. Big surprise when you fly from Miami to Brazil and find that you’re 3 time zones closer to Africa.
I live in Miami and just returned from visiting Panamá.
The Panamá canal is about 40 miles EAST of Miami.
And most, but not quite all, of South America is EAST of Panamá.
Fundamentally the OP’s glitch was measuring the southern hemisphere from the edge of Antarctica and the northern hemisphere from the pole.
Which is a ~1200 mile mistake on a planet only 12K miles pole to pole.
I think part of it might also be that we think of South America and Africa as “southern”, when the Equator runs right through both of them. The relative scarcity of land in the Southern Hemisphere causes folks to subconsciously put the centerline of maps, not through the Equator, but through the Middle-of-the-Earth Sea (that, of course, is what “Mediterranean” means). And that makes Australia look very far south indeed.
Also cool is going to western South America, flying about half-way around the world, and being only a couple-three time zones away from California. Jet lag is not much of an issue.
Yeah, the southern part of SA is anything but hot and dry - it’s a cool, wet, windy, highly glaciated terrain.
Nobody else noticed this mistake? The earth’s circumference is almost 25,000 miles. No way is the distance from Tierra del Fuego to the pole 8,700 miles, i.e., more than a third of the circumference. It’s not even 8,700 kilometers.
According to my measurements using Google Earth, it’s about 2,400 miles, 3,840 km.
Indeed, one joke/riddle was that the Pacific entrance to the Panama canal is east of the Carribean side.
As to the mandela effect- maybe it’s my Aspergers, maybe because my brother had a large school atlas that I looked at a lot (and I had a large collection of maps) but I am astounded how little some people, especially Americans, know about geography. I recall on the news a little while ago some GOP congresscritter thinking they could stump a government official by challenging her to point to Ukraine on a map… the former ambassador to Ukraine. Fortunately, the bar is higher for actual government appointees (usually).
Another consideration is climate. North America (Canada in particular) is noted for winter Arctic blasts, coming down across the norhtern land mass. In winter the Arctic ocean is frozen (so far), so there’s no mitigation of the cold air moving southeast. By contrast, cold air from the Antarctic has to traverse the oceans surrounding it to get to Australia, South Africa or South America. The oceans are cold, but beyond the edges of the continent never freeze. Being salty, they may get to -4°C but never the -50° we see in the polar land extremes. The air is warmed as it travels north from the south pole over progressively warmer seas already above freezing. So it’s not just that the southern areas are far from the pole. they are also far across a moderating ocean.
Toronto and New York regularly get snow, despite being on latitude with Spain and southern France. Europe is farther north relatively London more northerly than cold Minneapolis, but less extreme in winter. Iceland is liveable on the edge of the Arctic circle. They benefit from the Gulf Stream, as water overheated in the Gulf of Mexico flows northeast to Britain.
Similar land and ice masses allow cold air to flow down into Siberia, making it the bleak climate we all imagine.
Altitude matters too - mountains block air flow to some extent, and temperatures fall with altitude. Thus there is skiing in Colorado about the same latitude as Athens. The lack of mountains in Canada’s northwest makes cold air flow south easier.
Climate is complex. For example, one concern of gglobal warming is what happens if the arctic ocean no longer freezes over so regularly? Does North America winter suddenly become less extreme? Would a sudden melt of the Greenland ice cap push cold fresher water south past Newfoundland and cut off the flow of the Gulf Stream, causing a colder north European climate?
Once you get properly into the Southern Ocean it gets pretty evil.
There is an old saying that goes something like: Below 50º there is no law. Below 60º there is no God.
Cape Horn is 56º, and the Antarctic Circle, which is a good approximation to the continent, is at 66º.
Antarctica is 40% bigger than Europe, so isn’t to be ignored. It has a significantly harsher climate than the Arctic.
Southern Australian climate is somewhat influenced by the Antarctic Annulus, which is the dominant ocean current running around the Antarctic. The sea surface temperature affects rainfall, and where the current sits is a big determinant of whether we get a wet winter or not. Very occasionally we can get weather systems that drag cold air in. By our standards that can get chilly. But many northern hemisphere people would be getting out the deck chairs and sun cream and wondering what the heck we are moaning about.
It’s not just subconscious. The center of a world map is often north of the equator, with Antarctica absent or cut off just south of the coastline. Think of the plain old Mercator projection; it’s almost never used in full, with its big huge ludicrous Antarctica.
It’s easy to have the OP’s misimpression of geography if all you ever see is a schoolroom type globe spinning on the polar axis while your eyes are focused along the equatorial region spinning by, or worse yet looking at Mercator projections or maps that cut short the polar regions. I don’t recall exactly when long ago some science show pointed out the actual distance from the south pole to the African and South American capes and the great heat sink effect Antarctica had on the southern hemisphere. The climate of the northern hemisphere is also distorted by the Gulf Stream and the Japanese Current which keeps certain parts of the northern hemisphere much warmer than others at the same latitude.
That’s not what the Mandela Effect means. That’s just ignorance of geography.
The Mercator projection is absolutely never used in full, because it puts the poles an infinite distance away. You have to cut it off somewhere. A southern cutoff latitude just below the southernmost point of Antarctica’s coastline is often used just because, well, what would you be showing on a map south of that, anyway? Similarly, a logical northern cutoff point is the northernmost edge of the northernmost islands, because again, there’s nothing to show beyond that. But, yes, that logical northern cutoff point is more extreme than the logical southern cutoff point.
I hate to do this, but is it okay if I request that this thread be closed?
My question has been thoroughly answered, I’ve read and enjoyed every post, but now it’s time to move on to more important things like starting a wiki that allows users to rank every XKCD comic strip:
Thanks, all! 
I noticed it. I just didn’t directly call it out.
I did point out the ~1200 mile mistake the OP did make in their initial understanding, but left implied the fact that was nowhere near the 8700 miles of their later statement.
We normally don’t close threads, even if the OP considers them to be fully answered. Someone else may have something interesting to contribute to the topic, or someone might have a follow-up question… If not, the thread will sink off of the main page on its own.
It’s all the same in the sense that the poles are cold, the equator is relatively hot, and it’s temperate in between.
The major difference is that most Northern Hemisphere continents are a lot further north than the Southern Hemisphere ones are far south.
For example, the 40th parallel North is the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska, and the latitude of Beijing, Boulder, Sardinia, Philadelphia, Madrid, and Ankara.
The 40th parallel South passes through Tasmania, southern Chile, and entirely south of Africa.
Meanwhile, the Tropic of Cancer (23.494 degrees north) passes through Mexico, just north of Cuba, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, Bangladesh, China, and Taiwan.
The Tropic of Capricorn (23.494 degrees south) goes through southern Africa (Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa), Madagascar, northern Australia, northern Chile, northern Argentina, Paraguay, and southern Brazil.
I apologize if my post was tactless toward the OP, or seemed that way.
I didn’t read your post that way, nor did my post intend any criticism of you.
For the record, the GOPer making the map challenge was former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the person he tried to stump was NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly (graduate degree in European studies from Cambridge), who had the temerity to ask about the former ambassador to Ukraine in her interview.
And those tropics effectively become the equator at different times of the year due to the direct sunlight they receive.