Checked 18 August 2026
We checked
Claim: The Earth is flat
No, the Earth is not flat — it's an oblate spheroid, confirmed by geodesy, satellite data, spaceflight imagery, and centuries of astronomical observation. This is settled, not a matter of competing evidence.
Claim: The Earth is flat
No — the evidence is against itGeodesy, satellite measurements, spaceflight imagery, and millennia of astronomical observation consistently establish that Earth is an oblate spheroid, not flat.
ReferencesRowbotham conducted the Bedford Level experiment on a straight stretch of river and concluded, from an apparent lack of curvature, that the Earth was flat.
He published this as a 16-page pamphlet, 'Zetetic Astronomy,' under the pseudonym Parallax.
Rowbotham expanded the pamphlet into a full book, 'Earth Not a Globe,' adding a model of a disc centered on the North Pole bounded by an ice wall.
Samuel Shenton founded the International Flat Earth Society in England as a direct successor to Rowbotham's Universal Zetetic Society, giving the belief an organized modern home.
Flat-earth claims spread widely again through YouTube, forums and social media, reaching an audience far larger than the older society ever had.
The modern flat-earth belief traces to English writer Samuel Rowbotham, who after observing a stretch of the Old Bedford River in 1838 concluded the Earth showed no curvature and published this as a pamphlet in 1849, later expanded into the book 'Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe.' His followers formed societies that kept the idea alive into the 20th century, and it was formally revived as the Flat Earth Society in 1956. The belief saw a further, much larger resurgence after 2015 driven by video-sharing platforms and social media, distinct from and much later than the ancient pre-scientific cosmologies it's sometimes conflated with.
ReferencesReviewed 24 September 2026 — nothing had changed.
Claims on this page are re-checked periodically; any change of finding is reviewed by a person before it appears here.