Columbus wasn’t good at math. He was Italian.......................
Why didn’t he just GPS it?
They *NEVER* learn!
>>>
'Mercans... you just can't curse these People.
Anyone who bothered to notice that a ship (or land viewed from a ship) disappeared over the horizon while it could still be seen knew this.
Eratosthenes declares that it is no longer necessary to inquire as to the cause of the overflow of the Nile, since we know definitely that men have come to the sources of the Nile and have observed the rains there.
— Eratosthenes
Proclus on Plato Timaeus, Vol. 1, 121.8-11 (Diehl). Quoted in Morris R. Cohen and I. E. Drabkin, A Sourcebook in Greek Science (1948), 383.
https://todayinsci.com/E/Eratosthenes/Eratosthenes-Quotations.htm
“Columbus was looking for a SEA route to India and China because 40 years earlier Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 cutting off the LAND routes.”
Time for those “wokesters” to finally cast disdain upon the Moslems.
For if they had simply allowed the Europeans access to the Far East via land, the “Evil White Man” would never have had to seek the Oceanic route, thus never despoiling the idyllic lives and culture of the peaceful Native Americans.
So, there you go. It’s all the Moslems fault!!!
Columbus was laughed at because of his math error, not because he thought the world to be round. Educated people of the time (kings’ science advisers, etc) all knew this. They also had a decent idea of the earth’s diameter.
The crazy thing is, Columbus discovered land pretty much were he expected to find it. Islands, and then farther west a mainland. People with darker, but not black skin, straight black hair, little body hair (He had Marco Polo’s description of China), strange animals, food, etc.
His problem was that all of his rewards, a percentage of things found, being in charge of it all—Admiral of the Ocean Sea, all depended on it being the Indies, not some new place. Soon everyone knew he hadn’t found a new way to the Indies—but he couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it.
It was around here somewhere. I think it’s very close.
bkmk
I recall that a number of years ago someone (an islamist I assume) said that an arab scientist did the same ‘test’/experiment and came out with a even more accurate estimation.
I had to point out that the arab was copying the experiment invented by the greek, and that the arab did it 1000 years later