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Showing posts from August, 2012

In 1493,Columbus Stole All he could See and Lied to the World

Myth #1 "The People of 1492 Thought the World was Flat" It is very unlikely that anyone on either side of the Atlantic believed the world was flat in 1492. The myth was created by Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus wherein he described Columbus' supposed defense of this round-earth theory before the flat-earth savants at Salamanca University. Irving himself admits the story is fales. (see Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians by Jeffrey Burton Russell). In truth, the elite did not resist Columbus because they thought he would fall off the earth’s edge; rather, they thought he had underestimated the size of the earth and would never be able to sail so far in open water (a quite reasonable concern had there not been an unanticipated land mass upon which Columbus could stumble). For additional evidence I ask you to look at this picture of a classical statue of Atlas holding a celestial globe from sometime between 150 and 73 B.C.E. (