Regarding the Flat Earth Society: I always thought they were a great put-on. I remember seeing a representative of that organization being interviewed on TV many years ago, about the time the first astronauts were going into space. I could swear the guy was wearing a fake mustache or some other semi-obvious disguise. I don't know who he really was, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't who he claimed to be.

The interviewer was one of your typical TV hosts who had no particular expertise in science. I think this might have been on the Today Show or something like it. The interviewer asked the Flat Earth guy how it was possible, if the earth was flat, for astronauts to orbit around it. The Flat Earth guy demonstrated, with a flat polar map, how the astronaut was simply hovering in a circular path above the flat earth. I think he said the magnetic pull of the North Pole was what held the space capsule in orbit. He had an answer for every question the interviewer could throw at him.

I always suspected, although I can't prove it, that the Flat Earth Society was simply a group of scientists, or maybe scientific-minded amateurs, who were having a laugh at the expense of gullible reporters. At the same time, they were performing the very valuable service of demonstrating that the average man-on-the-street, or even reporter, doesn't know enough science to put together a coherent argument for how he KNOWS the earth is round. In other words, most people "know" the earth is round only because their teachers told them so, and they believed it!