Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...latter part of the 15th Century, the idea began to get about that the earth was a sphere...
Encyclopaedia Britannica declares, however, that "the earliest astronomers universally regarded the earth as a sphere." It is also said that, according to Aristotle, the mathematicians of his day computed the circumference of the earth to be 400,000 stadia. The length of the stadium being variable, this figure is rather indefinite...
Erastothenes, a Greek geometer and astronomer who flourished about two centuries before Christ, is credited with being the first to entertain an accurate idea of the principles on which the determination of the figure ot the earth really depends. It is said that "his results were inaccurate, but his method is the same as that which is followed at the present day." He suggested 250,000 stadia as the earth's circumference...
...Greek geometer and astronomer" is spelled "Eratosthenes"). TIME, how- ever, was referring to popular conceptions : "For long men thought the earth was flat. In the latter part of the 15th Century, the idea began to get about...
People from all the earth's cubbyholes...