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The Mandela Effect: False Memory

I would have sworn that it was John Travolta's child (or maybe Sylvester Stallone's) who died on a treadmill with a cord around their neck.
Turn's out it was Mike Tyson's daughter.
 
I briefly had a Mandela moment when, on BBC Radio 5 Live just now, they were bigging up tonight's 60th anniversary Doctor Who special and said that it will feature Bernard Cribbins.
Hang on a mo' I thought. Didn't he die last year?
A quick Google confirmed that the veteran actor's demise was indeed in July 2022, so I assume he will be shown in flashback using old footage.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I briefly had a Mandela moment when, on BBC Radio 5 Live just now, they were bigging up tonight's 60th anniversary Doctor Who special and said that it will feature Bernard Cribbins.
Hang on a mo' I thought. Didn't he die last year?
A quick Google confirmed that the veteran actor's demise was indeed in July 2022, so I assume he will be shown in flashback using old footage.
Click to expand...
Nope, he had actually finished all his filming for the new episodes prior to his death.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
An article from The Guardian May 12, 1944

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-guardian-dilemna-dilemma/73236584/
Click to expand...
Yes, I am also someone who suffers from this nagging sense that in my youth I was advised to spell `dilemma` with a silent /n/ after the first `m`.

Of all the so called Mandela Effects (and I notice that they are diminishing in volume since the first flush of them six or so years back) this one seems the most elusive to rational explanation.

Are we just confusing the word with the word `condemn` - and if so, why? Or is it just the power of of mass suggestion?

Most habitual mispellings are the result of predictable misaprehensions whereby people feel that a certain word `ought` logically to be spelt a certain way. Thus forty ought to be `fourty`, Wednesday ought to be `Wensday` and pronunciation ought to be `pronounciation` and so on.

But in the case of `dilemma` we have a case of people misremembering a spelling which is counterintuitive - and on a mass scale!

After reading that vintage Guardian articcle I do wonder if there wasn't a rogue school textbook doing the rounds in the 60s and 70s, when we were kids, containing the mispelling of `dilemma`. This is not as barmy as it first sounds. I am an English language teacher and make use of English language textbooks on a daily basis - and I can tell you that they are not sacrosanct. There is an average of two errors per book which the subeditor slept through. If there was an educated man or woman in the 1940S who had the `verbal blindspot` of putting a silent `n` in that word, then maybe he was the right age to be writing - or even editing! -English language textbooks of the kind that would still be in use when our generation were going through school.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Yes, I am also someone who suffers from this nagging sense that in my youth I was advised to spell `dilemma` with a silent /n/ after the first `m`.

Of all the so called Mandela Effects (and I notice that they are diminishing in volume since the first flush of them six or so years back) this one seems the most elusive to rational explanation.

Are we just confusing the word with the word `condemn` - and if so, why? Or is it just the power of of mass suggestion?

Most habitual mispellings are the result of predictable misaprehensions whereby people feel that a certain word `ought` logically to be spelt a certain way. Thus forty ought to be `fourty`, Wednesday ought to be `Wensday` and pronunciation ought to be `pronounciation` and so on.

But in the case of `dilemma` we have a case of people misremembering a spelling which is counterintuitive - and on a mass scale!

After reading that vintage Guardian articcle I do wonder if there wasn't a rogue school textbook doing the rounds in the 60s and 70s, when we were kids, containing the mispelling of `dilemma`. This is not as barmy as it first sounds. I am an English language teacher and make use of English language textbooks on a daily basis - and I can tell you that they are not sacrosanct. There is an average of two errors per book which the subeditor slept through. If there was an educated man or woman in the 1940S who had the `verbal blindspot` of putting a silent `n` in that word, then maybe he was the right age to be writing - or even editing! -English language textbooks of the kind that would still be in use when our generation were going through school.
Click to expand...
Or, we all went to the same dodgy school?
 
Zeke Newbold said:
After reading that vintage Guardian articcle I do wonder if there wasn't a rogue school textbook doing the rounds in the 60s and 70s, when we were kids, containing the mispelling of `dilemma`. This is not as barmy as it first sounds. I am an English language teacher and make use of English language textbooks on a daily basis - and I can tell you that they are not sacrosanct. There is an average of two errors per book which the subeditor slept through. If there was an educated man or woman in the 1940S who had the `verbal blindspot` of putting a silent `n` in that word, then maybe he was the right age to be writing - or even editing! -English language textbooks of the kind that would still be in use when our generation were going through school.
Click to expand...
Math books as well. Often when checking our homework in class, the class would get a wrong answer according to the teacher's textbook, but most of the pupils' answers were the same. If we had a good math teacher, we would work on the problem as a group and, if the class's answer was correct, the teacher would change the answer in their textbook.
 
Don't forget the existence of typos and erroneous entry exist. If the teacher is 'warned' of an incorrect answer then they're absolutely allowed to correct the textbook. Any teacher who insists that their textbook answer is right in the face of evidence misunderstands the role of teacher.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Wednesday ought to be `Wensday` and pronunciation ought to be `pronounciation` and so on.
Click to expand...

You know my "sound it out" tip...this was one of the first ones I learned wedNESday. Also febRUary. God I'm lazy :)

Zeke Newbold said:
After reading that vintage Guardian articcle I do wonder if there wasn't a rogue school textbook doing the rounds in the 60s and 70s, when we were kids, containing the mispelling of `dilemma`.
Click to expand...

Heh, that would be amazing to track the source of a Mandela Effect!
 
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