Remembering the inauguration, when you weren’t even there

From Gail Collins's column in today's NY Times:

Watch the inauguration on television and hope that as time passes,
you’ll come to believe that you were actually there. Memory experts say
that this sort of thing happens all the time, and the number of
Americans who think they were at Woodstock, or watched the Red Sox win
the World Series or marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr.
is far, far greater than the number of actual attendees.

“I
almost feel like I was there for the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, given how
many times I’ve seen it on TV,” said John Mueller of Ohio State
University. “And the number of people who saw that plane floating in
the Hudson is probably already a lot higher than is possible.”

See also:

• Doonesbury on "Memory Refinement"