A rounded history of Flat-Earthers: How mad theory popularised in the Victorian era has been parroted by celebrities including Freddie Flintoff

When Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, the great English cricket hero, gave credence to the belief that the Earth is flat, he was in good company.

Before his confession, 2017 followed that of former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and American rapper Bobby Ray Simmons Jr.

They advanced a theory that really took off in the Victorian era, when the biblical creationist Samuel Birley Rowbotham conducted a test in 1838 called the Bedford Level Experiment.

After placing a pair of surveyor’s rods six miles apart along a straight stretch of the Old Bedford River, Rowbotham declared that he could see one rod while standing next to the other – so that meant the world must be flat.

Regardless of the fact that the test was later definitively debunked, the belief that the Earth is flat refused to die.

In the 20th century, what became the Flat Earth Society was led by the tireless campaigner Samuel Shenton and then the California-based Charles Johnson.

The Internet age has spawned a new army of ‘believers’, one of whom hinted this week that he had concluded that the Earth might be round.

Jeran Campanella, who runs the popular Flat Earth YouTube show “Jeransim,” traveled to Antarctica and witnessed firsthand that the sun doesn’t set during the Southern Hemisphere summer.

He tells viewers in a new video: ‘Sometimes life is wrong and I thought there was no 24-hour sun. Actually, I was pretty sure.

‘And it’s a fact: the sun revolves around you in the south. So what does that mean? You’ll have to find that out for yourselves.’

Campanella thanked the organizer of the trip, which cost $35,000 (£27,500) – although he did not mention that the Earth is spherical.

In 2018, daring amateur ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes launched himself nearly 2,000 feet into the Earth in a homemade steam-powered rocket in an attempt to prove that the Earth is flat.

He injured himself in the hard landing that followed and was subsequently killed in another rocket launch in 2020.

The ancient Greeks first discovered that the Earth was not flat in at least 200 BC.

Solid mathematical evidence was provided in 1543 by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

Then came the first photographic evidence of the Earth’s shape, culminating in the first image of the Earth as a complete sphere in 1966.

Rowbotham’s experiment in 1838 was followed by the issue of a £500 public bet by his supporter John Hampden in 1870.

He offered the money to anyone who could prove that the Earth was not flat.

Surveyor and scientist Alfred Russell Wallace took up the challenge. Knowing that Rowbotham’s ‘findings’ were the result of an optical illusion called ‘atmospheric refraction’, he modified the original experiment to eliminate it.

When it was repeated, Russell Wallace was able to demonstrate that there was some curvature.

But Hampden refused to accept the result and instead sued Wallace, claiming he had cheated.

After a long trial, Hampden was jailed for libel and threatening to kill Wallace.

But the bet was ruled to be void because Hampden had withdrawn the bet, so Wallace had to return the money.

One of Hampden’s supporters, the Christian campaigner Lady Elizabeth Blount, subsequently founded the Universal Zetetic Society to prove his point.

And after his first experiment, Rowbotham had written a pamphlet entitled Earth Not a Globe, which was expanded into a book in 1865.

Blount’s society published a magazine of the same title and attracted members including an archbishop and several aristocrats and literary figures.

In 1956 the group became the International Flat Earth Society.

The main organizer, Mr. Shenton, dismissed NASA’s photographic evidence of our spherical planet, saying, “It’s easy to see how such a photo could fool the untrained eye.”

When Shenton died in 1971, the Society’s membership records passed to Charles Johnson in California.

He declared himself “president of the International Flat Earth Research Society of America and Covenant People’s Church.”

Johnson told Newsweek in 1984, “If the Earth were a ball spinning in space, there would be no up or down.”

After Johnson’s death in 2001, the flat-Earth theory continued with the expansion of Internet use.

The Flat-Earth Society was revived as an online discussion forum in 2004, and the group was officially relaunched in 2009.

Serious Flat-Earthers believe NASA faked its photos of the planet from space.

In November 2017, Flintoff called himself a Flat-Earth enthusiast.

He asked, “If you’re in a helicopter and you’re hovering, why doesn’t the Earth do the same? [rotate under you] when it’s round?’

The former cricketer added, “Why would water stand still as we hurtle through space? Why doesn’t it wobble?’

Months earlier, Shaquille O’Neal had said, “I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat for me,” he stated.

“I’m not going up and down at a 360 degree angle and all that gravity stuff.”

In 2018, a YouGov poll of more than 8,000 US adults suggested that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely sure the Earth is round.

Conferences elsewhere in the US have attracted thousands of visitors from around the world.

Another influential figure in the movement is Mark Sargent, who voiced his views on the ITV show on This Morning in 2020.