The Myth of the Earth's Roundness

By the 13th century, the standard textbook on cosmology was John Sachrobovskar's Tractatus Desfera or the Treatise on the Sphere. The idea that the medieval church taught that the earth was flat is quite simply a complete myth. So where did the myth come from? If it isn't true, why do people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Aaron Ra cling to it so doggedly? It largely arose in the United States in the early 19th century. In Columbus as a forward-thinking rationalist, it turns his back on the darkness of the old world. This is why someone like Neil de Grasse Tyson persists in perpetuating this story to