the point that these images are inauthentic, the Library of Congress sells this T-
shirt featuring six different Columbus faces.
Intense debunking of the flat-earth legend, especially in 1992, the Columbus
quincentenary, has made an impact. By 1994, even Pageant had removed its
flat-earth language. Now the “superstitious sailors... grew increasingly
mutinous” merely because they were “fearful of sailing into the oceanic
unknown.” Unfortunately, teachers who themselves learned the flat-earth story
will never infer from that modestly revised sentence that it was wrong.^45
Boorstin and Kelley confront the legend more directly than other textbooks but
again with wholly ineffectual words: “In Columbus’s time all educated people
and most sailors believed that the earth was a sphere.” To be sure, the sentence
quietly notes that not everyone believed in flat-earth geography. But it still
implies that the round-earth idea was unusual. Not only students but also
teachers read textbooks like Boorstin and Kelley without challenging their
belief that Columbus proved the world round. Thus many teachers still
implicitly relay to their students the flat-earth legend.