An “interesting” development in the modern world is the abject rejection of science by a certain segment of society. Take flat earthers for example, people who have decided to reject evidence dating back to the 5th century BCE. It’s important to note that even the ancients had some understanding that the world was not just a disk and took measurements to try and get a better picture.
For example, multiple Greek philosophers and mathematicians, including Pythagoras (you may remember his theory for triangles,) Aristotle, and Ptolemy all did measurements and took observations of the natural world and concluded that the earth must have been round.
And this isn’t just limited to ancient Greece, Vedic texts from roughly the same time period actually assumed the earth was spherical when developing timetables and charting astronomy. Despite some common history myths (it seems humans can have a wrong understanding of most things) the Romans and even the early Christian church, all believed in a spherical model of the planet.
The origins of this myth, a true “fake science” fact of the past comes from American writer Washington Irving’s belief that early opposition to Christopher Columbus was from the church that believed his ships would simply go over the side of the earth. Seeing as the church had no such belief at the time and there is no record of this, Washington Irving may have founded the entire flat earth movement on a lie.
Of course, even people who are wholly on the side of science will often spout falsehoods about our world. Let’s take the seasons for example. In the northern hemisphere, winter is cooler and summer is warmer. Many a parent has told their children that this is a result of the (spherical) Earth being closer to the sun, but the real “culprit” is Earth's 23.4-degree axial tilt.
And on the topic of space, there is an often repeated anecdote that NASA spent millions developing a pen that would work in space, while the Soviet Union just used a pencil. Except that the graphite in a pencil is conductive and its shavings could be an electrical fire risk. The bottom line is that this joke is simply false. Additionally, the pen NASA did use went for $6 a unit and the USSR actually bought some as well.
People do love a good story, which is probably why the anecdote stuck. Similarly, and this might shock some people, lemmings do not commit mass suicide. The 1958 Disney documentary film “White Wilderness” presented this idea as a fact, while in reality it was completely fabricated. Even worse, the documentary wasn’t even original, as there were legends from the 19th century about lemming suicides.
