They all laughed at Columbus when he said the world was round,
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
Ira Gershwin
Professor Rodney Stark grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, in the 1930s and 1940s. He was, in his own words, “an American Protestant with intellectual pretensions”.
Every October 12 – Columbus Day – he would look on at “throngs of Knights of Columbus members, accompanied by priests, marching in celebration of the arrival of the ‘Great Navigator’ in the New World”. The young Stark found the spectacle absurd. He knew that Columbus had acted in the teeth of unyielding opposition from Roman Catholic prelates who cited biblical proof that the world was flat. Any attempt to reach Asia by sailing west would mean ships falling off the edge of the world, they said.
