Who Knew It First

 Today everybody knows that the Earth is round. But long ago people didn't believe it. There is a good story of the great Italian scientist Galileo. Galileo lived in the 17th century. When Galileo was eighteen, one day he was in a big church. When he was looking at a big lamp that was hanging under the roof, he noticed that it moved on the chain at the same periods of time. That helped him discover some physical laws. The first telescope was made by Galileo and he could watch the stars through it. Later he proved that the Earth was round and it moved. 

Newton, a great English scientist, was born in the same year when Galileo died (1662), and he also proved the ideas about the movement of the Earth.

Two thousand years before Galileo the movement of the sun and stars was known to Greeks and Egyptians. Some Greeks even knew that the Earth was not flat but round like a ball. Some even said that the distance round the Earth was 25,000 miles. And this was proved many years later by scientists.

America was discovered by Columbus in 1492. He wanted to go to the east by sailing west. He was laughed at when he said he could go that way to India because the Earth was round.

The people who lived in America at that time were named Indians by Columbus because he thought it was India. He went back to Spain and did not know that it was a new continent.

Thirty years after America was discovered by Columbus, the ship of Magellan, a Portuguese sailor, went round the Indian Ocean to South America and past the Cape of Good Hope back to Europe.

Magellan himself died on one of the Philippine Islands in 1521. His ship sailed to the west and came back home from the east three years later. So the men on the ship could see that the Earth was round.

But it was harder to believe that the Earth was moving round the sun. It was proved by Copernicus, a Polish scientist in the 16th century.