Happy Birthday, Madiba!

The Mandela Effect is a pseudoscientific belief that differences between a person’s memories and the real world are caused by changes to past events in the timeline.

To even more simply explain it...when people think that things are real or happened, but they really aren’t real, neither did they happen...like believing that Nelson Mandela died while in prison.

Yesterday, the world celebrated what would have been the 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela. Mandela, more than the namesake of a weird alternate world, was and is one of the most important figures in the global civil rights movement. Mandela died in 2013 and has continued to be celebrated as a figure of peace, equality, and justice worldwide. Here are 15 Facts about Nelson Mandela that will help put to rest the Mandela Effect.

1. Nelson Mandela was born Rolihlahla Mandela, his original Xhosa name.

2. Mandela was actually born into the royal family of the Thembu people in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa's modern Eastern Cape province.

3. Mandela’s name was changed from Rolihlahla to Nelson when a teacher said that his name was not Christian.

4. Mandela became a devout Christian in the Methodist church which supported most of his education.

5. Mandela practiced law opening his own firm, Mandela and Tambo, in August 1953 operating in downtown Johannesburg.

6. Mandela became a member of the ANC (African National Council), an organization whose primary mission was to give voting rights to black and mixed-race Africans and, from the 1940s, to end apartheid.

7. Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1964 serving out his sentence between three different prisons with very harsh conditions contracting tuberculosis and even damaging his eyesight.

8. Mandela was released from the Victor Verster Prison on February 11, 1990.

9. Mandela was elected as the first black president of South Africa in 1994.

10. Even as president, Mandela made his own bed.

11. Mandela was often referred to as Madiba and described as “The Father of A Nation.”

12. Even after retirement in 1999, Mandela was very active on the world stage for social and political equality, for at least five more years.

13. In 2004, Mandela retired from retirement stating “Don’t call me, I will call you.”

14. Mandela’s last public appearance was during the closing ceremony of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

15. Mandela was appointed as a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John and granted membership in the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II.