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Exploration

The New World

Did everyone during Christopher Columbus’s time think that the world was flat

No, they did not. Though the common perception is that Christopher Columbus had to convince King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that the world was a sphere, Columbus actually had to convince the King and Queen of the circumference of the world. Though the ancient Greeks had discovered that the Earth was a sphere, centuries passed before this was generally accepted. By the fifteenth century, however—the time of Columbus’s sailing—most educated people believed the world to be round. But the question remained: how far was it to travel around the world?