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What claims are just not backed by historical facts? (kbin.social)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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To me, it's: That ancient people thought the Earth was flat.

We have records from around 430BC where Greek philosophers spoke of the Earth being a sphere. In 240BC the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth and was only about 2% out.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You're forgetting one crucial detail about Eratosthenes' experiment: the measurements were taken at the same time, noon on the summer solstice, the time of minimum shadow length in both locations.