   #copyright

Flat Earth

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Myths; Religious disputes

   15th century adaptation of a T-O map. This kind of medieval Mappa Mundi
   illustrate only the reachable side of a round Earth, since it was
   thought that no one could cross a torrid clime near the equator to the
   other half of the globe.
   Enlarge
   15th century adaptation of a T-O map. This kind of medieval Mappa Mundi
   illustrate only the reachable side of a round Earth, since it was
   thought that no one could cross a torrid clime near the equator to the
   other half of the globe.

   The notion of a flat Earth refers to the idea that the inhabited
   surface of Earth is flat, rather than a curved spherical Earth. This
   article focuses on the views about the shape of the earth during the
   history of Europe, on historical evidence for and against the modern
   belief that people in Medieval Europe believed that the Earth was flat,
   on modern believers in a Flat Earth, and on the use of the idea of a
   Flat Earth in literature and popular culture.

   In early Classical Antiquity, the Earth was generally believed to be
   flat. Greek philosophers from that time period were prone to form
   conclusions similar to those of Anaximander, who believed the Earth to
   be a short cylinder with a flat, circular top. It is conjectured that
   the first person to have advocated a spherical shape of the Earth was
   Pythagoras (6th century BC), but this idea is not supported by the fact
   that most presocratic Pythagoreans considered the world to be flat.
   Eratosthenes, however, had already calculated that the earth was a
   sphere as well as its rough circumference by the third century B.C.

   By the time of Pliny the Elder in the 1st century, however, the Earth's
   spherical shape was generally acknowledged among the learned in the
   western world. Around then Ptolemy derived his maps from a curved globe
   and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His
   writings remained the basis of European astronomy throughout the Middle
   Ages, although Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 3rd to 7th
   centuries) saw occasional arguments in favour of a flat Earth. The
   modern misconception that people of the Middle Ages believed that the
   Earth was flat first entered the popular imagination in the nineteenth
   century.

Antiquity

   Belief in a flat Earth is found in mankind's oldest writings. In early
   Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating
   in the ocean, and this forms the premise for early Greek maps like
   those of Anaximander and Hecataeus.

   By classical times an alternative idea, that Earth was spherical, had
   appeared. This was espoused by Pythagoras, apparently on aesthetic
   grounds, as he also held all other celestial bodies spherical.
   Aristotle provided observational evidence for the spherical Earth,
   noting that travelers going south see southern constellations rise
   higher above the horizon. This is only possible if their horizon is at
   an angle to northerners' horizon. Thus the Earth's surface cannot be
   flat. Also, the border of the shadow of Earth on the Moon during the
   partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always circular, no matter how high
   the Moon is over the horizon. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in
   every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in
   most directions.

   The Earth's circumference was measured around 240 BC by Eratosthenes.
   Eratosthenes knew that in Syene (now Aswan), in Egypt, the Sun was
   directly overhead at the summer solstice, while he estimated that a
   shadow cast by the Sun at Alexandria was 1/50th of a circle. He
   estimated the distance from Syene to Alexandria as 5,000 stades, and
   estimated the Earth's circumference was 250,000 stades and a degree was
   700 stades (implying a circumference of 252,000 stades). Eratosthenes
   used rough estimates and round numbers, but depending on the length of
   the stadion, his result is within a margin of between 2% and 20% of the
   actual circumference, 40,008 kilometres. Note that Eratosthenes could
   only measure the circumference of the Earth by assuming that the
   distance to the Sun is so great that the rays of sunlight are
   essentially parallel. A similar measurement, reported in a Chinese
   mathematical treatise the Zhoubi suanjing (1st c. BC), was used to
   measure the distance to the Sun by assuming that the Earth was flat.
   Sketch map from a 12th century manuscript of Macrobius's Dream of
   Scipio, showing the inhabited northern region separated from the
   antipodes by an imagined ocean spanning the equator.
   Enlarge
   Sketch map from a 12th century manuscript of Macrobius's Dream of
   Scipio, showing the inhabited northern region separated from the
   antipodes by an imagined ocean spanning the equator.

   During this period, Earth was generally thought of as divided into
   zones of climate, with a frigid clime at the poles, a deadly torrid
   clime near the equator, and a mild and habitable temperate clime
   between the two. It was thought that the different temperatures of
   these zones were related with proximity to the sun. They were wrong in
   believing that no one could cross the torrid clime and reach the
   unknown lands on the other half of the globe. At the time, these
   imagined lands as well as their inhabitants were both called antipodes.

   Lucretius (1st. c. BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth,
   because he considered the idea of antipodes absurd. But by the 1st
   century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claim that everyone
   agrees on the spherical shape of Earth ( Natural History, 2.64),
   although there continued to be disputes regarding the nature of the
   antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape.
   Interestingly, Pliny as an "intermediate" theory considers also the
   possibility of an imperfect sphere, "shaped like a pinecone". (Natural
   History, 2.65)

   In the Second century the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy advanced many
   arguments for the sphericity of the Earth. Among them was the
   observation that when sailing towards mountains, they seem to rise from
   the sea, indicating that they were hidden by the curved surface of the
   sea.

   In late antiquity such widely read encyclopedists as Macrobius (4th c.)
   and Martianus Capella (5th c.) discussed the circumference of the
   sphere of the Earth, its central position in the universe, the
   difference of the seasons in northern and southern hemispheres, and
   many other geographical details. In his commentary on Cicero's Dream of
   Scipio, Macrobius described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size
   in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos.

The Early Church

   From Late Antiquity, and from the beginnings of Christian theology,
   knowledge of the sphericity of the Earth had become widespread. As in
   secular culture a small minority contended with the flatness of the
   Earth. There was also some debate concerning the possibility of the
   inhabitants of the antipodes: people imagined as separated by an
   impassable torrid clime were difficult to reconcile with the Christian
   view of a unified human race descended from one couple and redeemed by
   a single Christ.

   Saint Augustine (354–430) argued against assuming people inhabited the
   antipodes:

     But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on
     the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to
     us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground
     credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned
     by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground
     that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and
     that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other:
     hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be
     inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or
     scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and
     spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the
     earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it
     immediately follow that it is peopled.

   Since these people would have to be descended from Adam, they would
   have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point;
   Augustine continues:

     [I]t is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and
     traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the
     world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that
     distant region are descended from that one first man.

   Augustine does not deny the idea of a round Earth but explicitly
   describes the Earth as a globe in his writings.

   A few Christian authors directly opposed the round Earth:
   Cosmas Indicopleustes' world picture - flat earth in a Tabernacle.
   Enlarge
   Cosmas Indicopleustes' world picture - flat earth in a Tabernacle.

   Lactantius (245–325), after his conversion to Christianity and
   rejection of Greek philosophy, called it "folly" because he thought
   that people under the opposite side of the sphere would not "obey"
   gravity. He asked,

     Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose
     footsteps are higher than their heads? That the crops and trees grow
     downward? That the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the
     earth? I am at a loss what to say of those who, when they have once
     erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend one vain thing
     by another.

   Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (315–386) saw Earth as a firmament floating on
   water (though the relevant quotation is found in the course of a sermon
   to the newly baptized, and it is unclear whether he was speaking
   poetically or in a physical sense).

   Saint John Chrysostom (344–408) saw a spherical Earth as contradictory
   to scripture. Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) also argued for a flat Earth
   based on scriptures; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known
   to us only by a criticism of it by Photius.

   Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote: "The earth is flat and the
   sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels through the
   northern parts as if hidden by a wall".

   The Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes (547) in his Topographia
   Christiana, where the Covenant Ark was meant to represent the whole
   universe, argued on theological grounds that the Earth was flat, a
   parallelogram enclosed by four oceans. At least one early Christian
   writer, Basil of Caesarea (329–379), believed the matter to be
   theologically irrelevant.

   Different historians have maintained that these advocates of the flat
   Earth were either influential (a view typified by Andrew Dickson White)
   or relatively unimportant (typified by Jeffrey Russell) in the later
   Middle Ages. The scarcity of references to their beliefs in later
   medieval writings convinces most of today's historians that their
   influence was slight.

The Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

   9th century Macrobian cosmic diagram showing the sphere of the Earth at
   the center, (globus terrae).
   Enlarge
   9th century Macrobian cosmic diagram showing the sphere of the Earth at
   the centre, (globus terrae).
   12th century T-O map representing the inhabitated world as described by
   Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae. (chapter 14, de terra et
   partibus).
   Enlarge
   12th century T-O map representing the inhabitated world as described by
   Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae. (chapter 14, de terra et
   partibus).

   With the end of Roman civilization, Western Europe entered the Middle
   Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual
   production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek)
   were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations.
   Still, the dominant textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the
   sphericity of the Earth. For example: many early medieval manuscripts
   of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal
   maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a
   spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus
   terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the centre of the hierarchically
   ordered planetary spheres. Images of some of these features can be
   found in Dream of Scipio.

   Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early
   Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian
   scholars:
     * Boethius (c. 480 – 524), who also wrote a theological treatise On
       the Trinity, repeated the Macrobian model of the Earth as an
       insignificant point in the centre of a spherical cosmos in his
       influential, and widely translated, Consolation of Philosophy.

     * Bishop Isidore of Seville (560 – 636) taught in his widely read
       encyclopedia, the Etymologies, that the Earth was round. His
       meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a
       disc-shaped Earth; his other writings make it clear, however, that
       he considered the Earth to be globular. He also admitted the
       possibility of people dwelling at the antipodes, considering them
       as legendary and noting that there was no evidence for their
       existence. Isidore's disc-shaped analogy continued to be used
       through the Middle Ages by authors clearly favouring a spherical
       Earth, e.g. the 9th century bishop Rabanus Maurus who compared the
       habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern
       temperate clime) with a wheel, imagined as a slice of the whole
       sphere.

     * The monk Bede (c.672 – 735) wrote in his influential treatise on
       computus, The Reckoning of Time, that the Earth was round,
       explaining the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of
       the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the
       world' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature.
       It is, in fact, set like a sphere in the middle of the whole
       universe." (De temporum ratione, 32). The large number of surviving
       manuscripts of The Reckoning of Time, copied to meet the
       Carolingian requirement that all priests should study the computus,
       indicates that many, if not most, priests were exposed to the idea
       of the sphericity of the Earth. Ælfric of Eynsham, paraphrased Bede
       into Old English, saying "Now the Earth's roundness and the Sun's
       orbit constitute the obstacle to the day's being equally long in
       every land."

     * Bishop Vergilius of Salzburg (c.700 – 784) is sometimes cited as
       having been persecuted for teaching "a perverse and sinful doctrine
       ... against God and his own soul" regarding the sphericity of the
       earth. Pope Zachary decided that "if it shall be clearly
       established that he professes belief in another world and other
       people existing beneath the earth, or in [another] sun and moon
       there, thou art to hold a council, and deprive him of his
       sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the church." The issue involved
       was not the sphericity of the Earth itself, but whether people
       living in the antipodes were not descended from Adam and hence were
       not in need of redemption. Vergilius succeeded in freeing himself
       from that charge; he later became a bishop and was canonised in the
       thirteenth century.

   A non-literary but graphic indication that people in the Middle Ages
   believed that the Earth was a sphere, is the use of the orb ( globus
   cruciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the Holy Roman Empire.
   It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperor
   Theodosius II ( 423) throughout the Middle Ages; the Reichsapfel was
   used in 1191 at the coronation of emperor Henry VI.

   A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth
   noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note
   has called into question the sphericity of the Earth." Of course it was
   probably not the few noted intellectuals who defined public opinion. It
   is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the
   shape of the Earth – if they considered the question at all. It may
   have been as irrelevant to them as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
   is to most of our contemporaries.

Later Middle Ages

   Picture from a 1550 edition of: "On the Sphere of the World". The most
   influential astronomy textbook of the 13th century.
   Enlarge
   Picture from a 1550 edition of: " On the Sphere of the World". The most
   influential astronomy textbook of the 13th century.

   By the 11th century, Europe had learned of Islamic astronomy. Around
   1070 started the Renaissance of the 12th century, featuring an
   intellectual revitalization of Europe with strong philosophical and
   scientific roots, and increased appetite for the study of nature. By
   then, abundant records suggest that any doubts that Europeans may have
   had in earlier times in regard to the spherical shape of the Earth were
   generally eliminated.

   Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian
   scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes'
   method. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most important and widely
   taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth;
   and he even took for granted his readers also knew the Earth is round.
   Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in
   favour of the idea that the Earth was a sphere. Also, " On the Sphere
   of the World", the most influential astronomy textbook of the 13th
   century and required reading by students in all Western European
   universities, described the world as a sphere.
   Artistic representation of a spherical Earth, (c.1400).
   Enlarge
   Artistic representation of a spherical Earth, (c.1400).

   The late development of European vernacular languages also provides
   some evidence to the contention that the spherical shape of the Earth
   was common knowledge outside academic circles. At the time, scholarly
   work was typically written in Latin. Works written in a native dialect
   or language (such as Italian or German) were generally intended for a
   wider audience.

   Dante's Divine Comedy, the last great work of literature of the Middle
   Ages, written in Italian, portrays Earth as a sphere. Also, the
   Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis (c. 1120), an important manual
   for the instruction of lesser clergy which was translated into Middle
   English, Old French, Middle High German, Old Russian, Middle Dutch, Old
   Norse, Icelandic, Spanish, and several Italian dialects, explicitly
   refers to a spherical Earth. Likewise, the fact that Bertold von
   Regensburg (mid-13th century) used the spherical Earth as a sermon
   illustration shows that he could assume this knowledge among his
   congregation. The sermon was held in the vernacular German, and thus
   was not intended for a learned audience.

   Reinhard Krüger, a professor for Romance literature at the University
   of Stuttgart (Germany), has discovered more than 100 medieval latin and
   vernacular writers from the late antiquity to the 15th century who were
   all convinced that the earth was round like a ball. However, as late as
   1400s, the Spanish theologian Tostatus still disputed the existence of
   any inhabitants at the antipodes. From a European perspective,
   Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia and Spanish explorations in
   the Americas in the 15th century and finally Ferdinand Magellan's
   circumnavigation of the earth brought the experimental proofs for the
   global shape of the earth.

Modern times

   The common misconception that people before the age of exploration
   believed that Earth was flat entered the popular imagination after
   Washington Irving's publication of The Life and Voyages of Christopher
   Columbus in 1828. In the United States, this belief persists in the
   popular imagination, and is even repeated in some widely read
   textbooks. Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant
   stated that "The superstitious sailors ... grew increasingly
   mutinous...because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the
   world"; however, no such historical account is known. Actually, sailors
   were probably among the first to know of the curvature of Earth from
   daily observations — seeing how shore landscape features (or masts of
   other ships) gradually descend/ascend near the horizon.
   The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval
   missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth
   meet..."
   Enlarge
   The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval
   missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth
   meet..."

   During the 19th century, the Romantic conception of a European "Dark
   Age" gave much more prominence to the Flat Earth model than it ever
   possessed historically.

   The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the
   firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres,
   executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an
   earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie
   Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) . The woodcut illustrates the statement
   in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the
   horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be
   traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its
   original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it
   in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the
   woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed.
   Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the
   woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than
   Flammarion's book is known.

   In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey
   Russell (professor of history at University of California, Santa
   Barbara) claims that the Flat Earth theory is a fable used to impugn
   pre-modern civilization, especially that of the Middle Ages in Europe.
   Today essentially all professional medievalists agree with Russell that
   the "medieval flat Earth" is a nineteenth-century fabrication, and that
   the few verifiable "flat Earthers" were the exception.

Transvaal perspective

   In 1898 during his solo circumnavigation of the world Joshua Slocum
   encountered such a group in the Transvaal Republic. Three Boers, one of
   them a clergyman, presented Slocum with a pamphlet in which they set
   out to prove that the world was flat. President Kruger advanced the
   same view, telling him "you don't mean [you sailed] around the world;
   it is impossible! You mean in the world!"

The Flat Earth Society

   The last known group of Flat Earth proponents, the Flat Earth Society,
   kept the concept alive and at one time claimed a few thousand
   followers. The society declined in the 1990s following a fire at its
   headquarters in California and the death of its last president, Charles
   K. Johnson, in 2001. They still maintain a website and forum. However,
   a poll of contributors to the forum indicated that a majority believed
   in a round earth, and some of the claims to belief in a flat earth may
   have been facetious or tongue-in-cheek, especially when combined with
   an evolutionist rather than creationist view.

   William Carpenter (1830-1896) maintained that "There are rivers that
   flow for hundreds of miles towards the level of the sea without falling
   more than a few feet - notably, the Nile, which, in a thousand miles,
   falls but a foot. A level expanse of this extent is quite incompatible
   with the idea of the Earth's "convexity."" Carpenter also presented
   aeronautic testimony that even at the great observable heights no
   curvature of the earth is observed, and fits with the idea of a
   flat-earth, since it is the nature of level surfaces to rise to a level
   with the human eye.

   English scientist Samuel Rowbotham (1816-1885), writing under the
   pseudonym "Parallax," published results of many experiments which
   tested the curvatures of water over lakes. He also produced studies
   which purported to show the effects of ships disappearing into the
   horizon can be explained by the laws of perspective in relation to the
   human eye.

   Flat-Earth president Charles K. Johnson, who spent years examining the
   studies of flat and round earth theories, produced supposed evidence of
   a conspiracy against flat-earth: "The idea of a spinning globe is only
   a conspiracy of error that Moses, Columbus, and FDR all fought..." His
   article was published in Science Digest, 1980, and has since achieved
   much controversy. The journal, Science Digest, goes on to state, "If it
   is a sphere, the surface of a large body of water must be curved. The
   Johnsons have checked the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea (a
   shallow salt lake in southern California near the Mexican border)
   without detecting any curvature."

The Flat Earth in popular culture

In fiction

     * In Ludvig Holberg's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723), Erasmus
       Montanus returns to his country area after having finished his
       studies in Copenhagen. He meets considerable opposition when he
       claims the earth is round, since all the peasants hold it to be
       flat, and he is denied marriage to his fiancée of this reason. Not
       until he cries "The earth is flat as a pancake", he is allowed to
       get his beloved.

     * In Rudyard Kipling's The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, the
       unnamed narrator and some friends are unjustly fined for a minor
       offence by a crooked village magistrate and his accomplices in the
       police. By way of revenge, they spread the rumor that a Parish
       Council meeting had voted in favour of a flat Earth. The village is
       ridiculed in the press, and a popular song entitled The Village
       that Voted the Earth was Flat sweeps the nation. When the narrator
       visits the House of Commons and observes the Members of Parliament
       singing the song, he reflects that he may have gone too far.

     * In L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose, the Three Wise Men of
       Gotham make their journey to decide whether the earth is flat,
       spherical or hollow.

     * In some of J.R.R. Tolkien's writings, his fantasy world of Arda is
       conceived as a world which was originally flat, but became
       spherical at the time of the Fall of Númenor.

     * In C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader it is implied that
       the fictional world of Narnia is flat, or at least that its
       inhabitants perceive it to be.

     * Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (1983 onwards) are set on a
       flat, disc-shaped world resting on the backs of four huge elephants
       which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle. His
       novel Small Gods ironically features a totalitarian church that
       insists the world is a sphere. Pratchett had earlier explored a
       similar setting in Strata (1981).

     * In Michael Swanwick's 1989 short story "The Edge of the World" he
       portrays a flat Earth with a history similar to ours; the story
       tells of three teenagers who take a trip to visit the world's edge.

     * E. A. Abbott's satire Flatland (1884) is set in an entirely
       two-dimensional world.

     * In the fictional text adventure universe of Zork, Quendor is
       located on a flat planet which some believe to be held up by a
       giant humanoid called a brogmoid.

In other contexts

     * Thomas Friedman uses the metaphor of a "flat Earth" to describe the
       leveling of the world economic stage in his best-selling book, The
       World is Flat.

     * The Spanish songwriter Quimi Portet released, in 2004, an album
       called "La Terra és Plana" (which in Catalan means "The Earth is
       Flat") and a single with the same title.

     * Robert McKimson's 1951 cartoon Hare We Go pairs up Bugs Bunny with
       Christopher Columbus. It opens with Columbus arguing about the
       shape of the world with the king of Spain, who insists that it's
       flat.

     * Monty Python's film The Meaning of Life contains a skit, The
       Crimson Permanent Assurance, in which a pirate office building
       falls off the edge of the world.

     * The comic strip The Wizard of Id had a strip which depicted two men
       arguing whether the Earth was flat or round. The king ended the
       argument by suggesting that both positions were right, calling it
       his "pizza theory."

     * Satirist Allan Sherman's song "Good Advice" climaxes with a
       description of Christopher Columbus prevailing on Queen Isabella to
       "pawn her jewels for all they're worth. / So next day he set sail /
       and as everyone knows / he fell off the edge of the earth. / And
       that was bad advice, bad advice..."

     * The Golden Sun video game series is set in a flat world called
       Weyard.

     * Creation in the role playing game Exalted is a flat world thousands
       of miles in extent.

     * Ernie Kovacs, in a radio skit called "Mr. Question Man", put a
       twist on the usual stereotyped skepticism of the round Earth. An
       alleged listener's question was, "If the Earth is round, why don't
       people fall off?" Kovacs' answer: "What you've stated is a common
       misconception. People are falling off all the time!"

     * Flip Wilson, in an old standup routine playing Christopher
       Columbus, put a different spin on the old joke. Arguing with
       someone over whether to take his famous voyage, he was told, "Don't
       you know the world is square?" He replied, "It sure is!"

     * In Cow & Chicken after Chicken and Cow were playing with the globe,
       their parents confiscated the globe and taught them that the Earth
       is flat like a pancake.

     * Our Flat Earth is the name of a Chicago late night comedy show that
       uses Flat Earth theory to parody intelligent design and religious
       conservatism.

     * British songwriter Thomas Dolby released his second album The Flat
       Earth in 1984, which includes the title song. A portion of the
       lyric:

          the Earth can be any shape you want it
          any shape at all
          dark and cold or bright and warm
          long or thin or small
          but it's home and all I ever had
          and maybe why for me the Earth is flat

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