Originally Posted by
desypete 
it seems impossible to believe that the mass of the whole world believed that the earth was flat and that people who thought different were mad
yet thats exactly what people used to believe in
Not sure about this, desypete, that there was a time when every one believed that the world was flat. Pythagoras from 6th century BC and Aristotle who lived in the 4th century BC are known to have believed the earth was spherical. A really clever dude named Erastosthenes actually calculated the diameter of the earth to within 1% in 250 BC using what is now high school math by measuring shadows at different spots on the earth at the same time of year. A modern historian says, '
With extraordinary few exceptions, no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat'.
So you were right on the mark in the first place, desypete, to not believe that folks believed the earth was flat. It does make a cool story tho.
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