This Dec 5 is the 10th anniversary (周年纪念日) of the death of Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa. He overthrew (推翻) the racial segregation system (种族隔离制度) in the nation and set people of color there free. You may know about his achievements. But do you know about the Mandela Effect? 

12月5日是前南非总统纳尔逊·曼德拉逝世十周年纪念日。他推翻了该国的种族隔离制度，解放了有色人种。你可能知道他的成就，但你了解曼德拉效应吗？

The Mandela Effect describes a situation where many people have the same false memory. The name of the theory (理论) dates back to 2010 when many people on the internet falsely remembered that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s in prison (监狱). But Mandela was actually freed in 1990 and passed away in 2013. US researcher Fiona Broome then created the term Mandela Effect based on (根据) this situation.

曼德拉效应描述了一种记忆集体错乱的情况。这个理论的名字可以追溯到2010年，当时很多网民错误地记得纳尔逊·曼德拉在20世纪80年代死在了监狱中。但实际上曼德拉在1990年获释，并于2013年去世。后来美国研究员菲奥娜·布鲁姆根据这种情况创造了“曼德拉效应”一词。

There are many other examples of the Mandela Effect. In 2022 in China, there was a heated discussion online about the sentence by Mencius: “Thus when Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man ... ” (“故天将降大任于斯/是人也”). Most people remembered it was “si (斯)”, while others insisted (坚称) it was “shi (是)”. Later, People’s Education Press (人民教育出版社) ended the discussion by saying that all its textbooks say shi. What do you remember it as?

曼德拉效应还有很多其他的例子。2022年，中国的互联网上掀起了对孟子这句话的热烈讨论：“故天将降大任于斯/是人也”。大多数人记得是“斯”，而其他人坚称是“是”。后来，人民教育出版社给出了结论：所有的教科书上都是“是”，结束了这场讨论。你还记得它是什么吗？

Psychologists (心理学家) have looked into the reasons for the Mandela Effect. For example, your mind may try to fill in missing gaps (空白) in your memory to make more sense of it, which is called confabulation (虚构症). However, this is not lying, but rather remembering details that never happened. 

心理学家调查了曼德拉效应产生的原因。比如，你的大脑可能会试图填补你记忆中缺失的空白使其更好理解，这被称为虚构症。然而，这并不是说谎，而是记住从未发生过的细节。

The internet may be another reason for the Mandela Effect, as the news we read can be false from the beginning. In 2018, a study of over 100,000 news stories showed that false news can spread faster and reach more people than the truth. As a powerful way to spread information, the internet might be the main reason for false information to enter (进入) our minds these days.

互联网可能是曼德拉效应产生的另一个原因，因为我们所看到的新闻可能从一开始就是错的。2018年，一项对于10万多条新闻报道的研究表明，假新闻比真新闻的传播速度更快、传播范围更广。作为一种强大的信息传播方式，互联网可能是当今虚假信息进入人们大脑的主要原因。