20K views · 967 reactions | The Tame Impala remix of Elvis Presley's...

In 1828 Washington Irving published a book that popularized the myth that Christopher Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was not flat. Irving told a tale of Columbus facing Spanish theologians who warned him that the Earth ended at the edge. In reality, educated Europeans had long recognized that the Earth was spherical, a fact known since the time of Pythagoras and Aristotle. Eratosthenes even computed the planet's circumference around 240 BC. Columbus sought a faster route to Asia and und