Wired:
Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician and librarian Eratosthenes calculates the Earth’s circumference. His data was rough, but he wasn’t far off.
Eratosthenes was an all-around guy, a Renaissance man centuries before the Renaissance. Some contemporaries called him Pentathalos, a champion of multiple skills. The breadth of his knowledge made him a natural for the post of librarian of the library of Alexandria, Egypt, the greatest repository of classical knowledge.
His detractors, however, mocked Eratosthenes as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. They called him Beta, because he came in second in every category.
Envy? Perhaps. He invented the Sieve of Eratosthenes, an algorithm for finding prime numbers still used in modified form today. He sketched the course of the Nile from the sea to Khartoum, and he correctly predicted that the source of the great, life-giving river would be found in great upland lakes.
Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it from the bottom of a deep well, and a sundial cast no shadow. Yet, to the north at Alexandria, a sundial cast a shadow even at the solstice midday, because the sun was not directly overhead there. Therefore, the Earth must be round — already conventionally believed by the astronomers of his day. more here
I thought the Bible stated that the Earth is flat.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Was it Thomas Sowell who said, “Fine, make a pencil…”?
“All you need is wood and graphite.”
“Where do you get the wood? What kind is best? What is graphite? How do you get it? Where is it? What is an eraser made of? How is it made? How do you make the steel band that mates the eraser to the fucking pencil?”
I paraphrase…
The Bible never said the earth is flat.
Quite the opposite.
Isaiah 40
22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
At that time, translator from Hebrew to English did not exactly do the job right.
Here is one article discussing that.
https://creation.com/isaiah-40-22-circle-sphere
Eratosthenes Wife: Honey, I have a list of things I want you to do today.
Eratosthenes: Uhhhhh…like…like what?
Eratosthenes wife: Number one on the list – clean out the pig pen, and don’t make a mess of it like you usually do.
Eratosthenes; But honey, I was planning on taking the mule and going down to Aswan to measure the circumference of the earth.
Eratosthenes wife: The what? What the hell is the circ… What? Never mind that, you’re staying here and helping me clean up this house, or you’ll be spending your nights in the pig pen. Do you know what that means? Do I make myself clear?
Eratosthenes: Yes dear….Ok….(later that month, when his wife got seriously ill, he managed to sneak down to Aswan and made his observations and did his calculations)
This picture will tell you science nuts exactly what happened to the dinosaurs.
https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Flat-Earth-Funny-Memes2-5b3339ddf2934__700.jpg
Celebrating a smart white guy on Juneteenth is heresy, you racist bigot.
Thank You cheryl
I showed Eratosthenes that passage in the scroll about the well at Syene.
We then computed the diameter of the Earth to within 800 yds.
Not bad considering that I hadn’t yet invented the calculator …
Just amazing.
@Erik the ne’er do well unmasked scumbag: I think the “pencil” theory was written by Leonard E. Read. It quite a famous essay on what it takes to make a pencil: I Pencil https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/
A tremendous amount of knowledge back in BC was lost during invasions, and the burning and destruction of knowledge. They still do not know how the pyramids were built with such precision that it still baffles scientists to this day.
He stole it from Africa.
Cheryl: That was hilarious!