The Stopped Clock of Bologna

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MMDE: Bologna station clock stopped for 16 years from 1980

Current: The Bologna station clock worked properly from 1980

A Mandela Effect from the 1980's has been identified.

This is an early example of a scientifically-studied instance of the Mass Memory Discrepancy Effect, of which the Mandela Effect is a sub class.

The background is that after the tragic atrocity of the Bologna Centrale station bombing, the blast stopped the clock at 10.25am on Aug 2nd, 1980. Many photographs were taken of it at this moment and used as a symbol when reporting the story. It was quickly repaired and worked normally from then on. However, it broke in 1996 and, as an act of remembrance, it's hands were set to 10.25am and it was not repaired.

A team of Italian psychologists, Stefania de Vitoa, Roberto Cubellib, and Sergio Della Sala then decided to study the false memory phenomenon and found most people thought the clock had been stopped for the entire 16 years since the explosion. This includes staff actually working at the station during this time, and many travellers would have seen and relied on it daily during this period.

There was no term for the MMDE at this time, but it sounds to many like the early documentation of a Mandela Effect, or large-scale alternative memory situation.

Study

The study is also described here, and was published in 2009:

We administered individually a formal questionnaire to 180 healthy participants (90 males and 90 females) aged 54.39 (SD 7.7, range: 46->67) familiar with the Bologna station or working there inquiring on their knowledge of the event. The relevant questions focused on whether interviewees remembered the clock working normally or as set at the explosion time during the 16 years in which it had been working. Of the 173 participants who knew that the clock is now stopped, 160 (92%) stated that the clock has always been broken. 127 (79%) further claimed to have seen it always set at 10.25, including all 21 railway employees. Most interviewees did not know that the clock had been working for over 16 years and stated that it had always been broken. From the 173 people who knew that at the time of testing the clock was stopped, a subgroup of 56 citizens who regularly take part in the annual official commemoration of the event has been further considered: only six (11%) of them correctly remember that the clock had been working in the past.

Reaction

Once this came to light in the modern-day Mandela Effect community, some interesting observations were made. For example, in the Reddit Mandela Effect sub: