What also didn’t happen was anyone watching it happen as a regular episode of the show, and not as a clip revealed much later, no matter how they remember it happening. The show wasn’t aired live, and anything approaching what actually happened would have been cut by the censors.
They don’t alter the position of things with respect to how far east or west they are of each other though; South America is way east of North America on either a Mercator projection or a globe.
With all due respect, that’s the whole point of the Mandala Effect. OF COURSE you believe it is the same. In “your” universe/memories/whatever, it hasn’t changed. But for those special people who are immune to the shifting unreality, it’s very obvious.
Personally, I think that the SDMB is just one big Turing test. So far, the SDMB bot has managed to pass it for two decades, which is really impressive AI.