[PW] flat earth?

[Deb Fuller]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 8:35 PM, FERGUSON Timothy
<TFERGUSON at goldcoast.qld.gov.au> wrote:

> People knew the Earth was shaped like a ball: it occurs in all kinds of
> popular literature from Bothieus (fifth century, as I recall) onward and
> one of the popes (Sylvester II, who was on the Throne of Saint Peter in
> 1000 AD) had a globe that he constructed and had prominently displayed
> in the Vatican to popularise his love of astronomy.

I ran a great planetarium show on celestial navigation at the National
Air and Space Museum called "And a Star to Steer Her By". It started
off with a image of a tall ship sailing on a piece of sea towards what
looks like the end of the Earth. The narration went something like
this "Sailors feared many things" (various things pop up - sea
monster, big rocks, mermaids), "Falling off the end of the Earth was
not one of them. Everyone knew Earth was round." The bit ended with
the ship happily sailing "off the end of the Earth" and continuing
around the dome. Then the show went on to talk about what they really
feared was getting lost because they had no accurate way of measuring
longitude at sea.

Deb