-----Original Message----- From: Monty J. Harder The majority thought the earth was flat, until Columbus and Magellan proved them wrong.
BS! This is a legend (as in urban legend). Everyone knew the Earth was round, especially sailors. This story came about because of a fiction novel written by I believe Dante. It's total BS to say people thought the Earth was flat. It was quite obvious, from any high enough mountain or on the open sea to see the curvature of the Earth. The problem sailors had with crossing the Atlantic was that they figured it was too wide to cross with the amount of supplies a ship could carry, and had there not been an American continent they'd have been right. The experts that laughed at Columbus did so because they knew his math was way off, he just got lucky in finding someone who was dumb enough to believe his math over the experts at the time.