Columbus and the flat Earth theory

Speaking of Christopher Columbus (as we were here last week), there are still some people who think that the great explorer, on his voyage to the New World, bravely defied the popular theory that the Earth was flat.

For example, that fiction about Columbus is touted in a letter to the editor in today's Rockford Register Star -- a letter, by the way, that is wrong on several other counts as well.

The truth is that most educated folks in Columbus's time recognized that the Earth was round (or spherical, in reality).

For all his other achievements, ol' Chris didn't break any new ground with respect to the shape of our planet, as we see here and here and here.