On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:04:36 -0500, Rich Webb
wrote:

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:39:23 -0800 (PST), JeffM
wrote:

Rich Webb wrote:
By the way, Columbus was wrong.

There are those who believe he knew what he was selling
was likely false but that he was a really good snake oil salesman.
He did get his gig financed.

Heh. Quite possible, I suppose. Lucky for him (and the crews!) there was
something out there. Even given the (pretty close) size estimate that
Eratosthenes of Cyrene et al. came up with, their experiences in large
bodies of water may have lead to the not unreasonable expectation that
there would likely not be just one big ocean between the western
extremes of Europe and the eastern of Asia. Of course, if the Atlantic
and Pacific had been swapped ...

It's not true that people didn't know the world was round. They had
seen the shadow on the moon and while that miight only mean it was a
round plate, I think quite a few had concluded it was a sphere.