Just goes to show how easy history is to alter tho. If he can do this as a one-off for shits and gigs just think what the people doing it on purpose are up to. I feel like I can hear my AP history teacher screaming "PRIMARY SOURCES" from the farthest depths of my subconscious.
I mean that's a great illustration of the importance of those primary sources in a memorable way, especially if you're out of school now and it's stuck with you that long.
But if you read a primary source, that's one persom who had the opportunity to make stuff up. With a secondary source, even if the primary it's based on is legit, there's some other guy who wasn't there and may either be lying to you or misinterpreting the primary source his report is based on. Each new level of isolation adds another opportunity to stack both lies and mistakes onto the data.
It's not that you can't go wrong with primary sources. It's that you can go a lot wronger without them.
While looking up what his middle name was, I learned that the tradition of middle names did not become widespread in the US until the 1830s. Interesting.
There's already an explanation for the Mandela effect, it's that our memories are extremely fallible and more affected by our view/environment as opposed to facts than most people believe.
This is aweful. We really don't need people polluting knowledge in officialy capacity. Effing around with friends or as a yahoo on the internet sure. I really hope this story itself is the bs.