MISINFORMED WE ARE

People did not believe the Earth to be flat during Columbus' time. Ferdinand, Isabella and the scholars did not argue with Columbus that the Earth was flat and he would fall off. 

Columbus and the Court spent nearly ten years arguing over whether Columbus could carry sufficient food and water to make it to the Indies. Interestingly, Columbus sailed for India, landed in the Americas, and thought where he landed was close to the coast of Japan. Distance measuring was not an exact science in the Middle Ages.

So.....Why was I taught in grammar school that Columbus believed the Earth was round, everyone else thought it was flat, and by sailing to the Americas he proved the Earth to be round.? Why were most, if not all of you, taught the same thing?

Washington Irving and the politicians of his day are responsible.

Washington Irving was and is one of America's best known and respected authors. His writings included Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In 1828, he wrote A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. He took literary freedom in the book. He mixed myth with fact. He had an active imagination. He set it to work.

Irving's story line was apparently more interesting if the Earth was flat and Columbus was trying to convince everyone it was round.  The story line was more exciting and dangerous. So Irving misrepresented historical fact.

The Earth had been determined to be round as far back as 600 BC. Two thousand years before Columbus, Men such as Copernicus, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle determined the earth was round. There was no question as to its spherical shape.

Sometime in the 300 BC, Aristotle wrote On The Heavens. Therein he clearly spelled out the Earth was round and why. One of the reasons was that it could be seen to be so by the spherical shadow it made on the moon.

Aristotle became the final authority. Everyone believed him. Even the early Islamists believed the earth to be round. They relied on Aristotle in so believing.

Now come the politicians. The politicos of Irving's day considered Irving a brilliant man. Everyone did. If he wrote in a novel that everyone except Columbus thought the world was flat, it had to be that way.Columbus was the hero of the book and had to be portrayed as such. Standing alone against an ignorant world. Many State legislatures made the book required reading for children. Though not fact, Irving's version of events became fact. 

Such is why you and I were taught in our early school years that Columbus believed the earth was round, that he fought hard to convince Ferdinand and Isabella he was correct, and that he made that perilous voyage. The voyage where everyone believed he and his ships were going to come to the edge of a flat Earth and fall of.

To this day, the fiction remains the truth. Children are still taught Columbus stood alone in believing the Earth was round. No one seems to care about correcting Irving's version of history.