One novelist helped create the myth that Earth was flat

A closer look

Everyone believes that medieval people thought the earth was flat, and you can blame one fiction writer for it. In 1828, Washington Irving wrote a heavily romanticized, largely fabricated biography of Christopher Columbus. He totally invented the dramatic scene where Columbus bravely defies ignorant clerics who think he'll sail off the edge of a flat earth. The scene was so well-written that the general public mistook it for actual historical fact forever.