Истината за един мит или „хроника на една предизвестена смърт“
The Truth of a Myth or “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”

Summary/Abstract: The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical. On the other hand the idea that educated men at the time of Columbus believed that the earth was flat, and that this belief was one of the obstacles to be overcome by Columbus before he could get his project sanctioned, remains one of the hardiest errors in teaching. This idea seems to have been widespread during the second half of the 19 th century. Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. Russell claims „with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat,“ and credits histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving for popularizing the flat-earth myth.

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