title: Haifa

text: Haifa is served by six railway stations and the Carmelit, currently Israel's only subway system (another is planned in Tel Aviv). The Nahariya–Tel Aviv Coastal Railway main line of Israel Railways runs along the coast of the Gulf of Haifa and has six stations within the city. From south-west to north-east, these stations are: Haifa Hof HaCarmel, Haifa Bat Galim, Haifa Merkaz HaShmona, HaMifrats Central, Hutzot HaMifratz and Kiryat Haim. Together with the Kiryat Motzkin Railway Station in the northern suburb Kiryat Motzkin, they form the Haifa – Krayot suburban line ("Parvarit"). There are direct trains from Haifa to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport, Nahariya, Akko, Kiryat Motzkin, Binyamina, Lod, Ramla, Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem and other locations, but all trains to Beersheba skips all Haifa stations.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa's intercity bus connections are operated almost exclusively by the Egged bus company, which operates two terminals:


title: Haifa

text: Lines to the North of the country use HaMifratz Central Bus Station and their coverage includes most towns in the North of Israel. Lines heading south use Haifa Hof HaCarmel Central Bus Station. Destinations directly reachable from Hof HaCarmel CBS include Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat, Raanana, Netanya, Hadera, Zikhron Ya'akov, Atlit, Tirat Carmel, Ben Gurion International Airport and intermediate communities. There are also three Egged lines that have their terminus in the Ramat Vizhnitz neighborhood and run to Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Ashdod. These used to be ""mehadrin"" (i.e. gender segregated) lines.


title: Haifa

text: All urban lines are run by Egged. There are also share taxis that run along some bus routes but do not have an official schedule. In 2006, Haifa implemented a trial network of neighborhood mini-buses – named "Shkhunatit" and run by Egged. In December 2012, GetTaxi, an app and taxi service which allows users to hail a cab using their smartphone without contacting the taxi station (by identifying and summoning the closest taxi) began operating. In the current initial phase, 50 taxis from the service are operating in Haifa.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa and the Krayot suburbs also have a new Phileas concept bus rapid transit system called the Metronit. These buses, operating with hybrid engines, follow optical strips embedded in designated lanes of roads, providing tram-like public transportation services. The Metronit consists of 100 18-meter buses, each with the capacity for 150 passengers, operating along of designated roadways. The new system officially opened on 16 August 2013 serving three lines.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa is one of the few cities in Israel where buses operate on Shabbat. Bus lines operate throughout the city on a reduced schedule from late Saturday morning onwards, and also connect Haifa with Nesher, Tirat Karmel, Yokneam, Nazareth, Nazareth Illit and intermediate communities. Since the summer of 2008, night buses are operated by Egged in Haifa (line 200) and the Krayot suburbs (line 210). During the summer of 2008 these lines operated 7 nights a week. Since 2013, along with route 1 of the Metronit, they operate 7 nights a week, making Haifa as the only city in Israel with 24/7 public transportation. Haifa is also the only city in Israel to operate a Saturday bus service to the beaches during summer time. Egged lines run during Saturday mornings from many neighborhoods to the Dado and Bat Galim beaches, and back in the afternoon.


title: Haifa

text: The Haifa underground railway system is called Carmelit. It is a subterranean funicular on rails, running from downtown Paris Square to Gan HaEm (Mother's Park) on Mount Carmel. With a single track, six stations and two trains, it is listed in "Guinness World Records" as the world's shortest metro line. The Carmelit accommodates bicycles.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa also has a cable car. The Haifa Cable Car gondola lift consists of six cabins and connects Bat Galim on the coast to the Stella Maris observation deck and monastery atop Mount Carmel. It serves mainly tourists.


title: Haifa

text: There are currently plans to add a 4.4 kilometre commuter cable car service to Haifa's public transport system, running from HaMifratz Central Bus Station at the foot of Mount Carmel to the Technion, and then to the University of Haifa.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa Airport serves domestic flights to Tel Aviv and Eilat as well as international charters to Cyprus, Greece and Jordan. The airliners that operate flights from Haifa are Arkia and Israir. There are currently plans to expand services from Haifa. Cruise ships operate from Haifa port primarily to destinations in the Eastern Mediterranean, Southern Europe and Black Sea.


title: Haifa

text: Travel between Haifa and the center of the country is possible by road with Highway 2, the main highway along the coastal plain, beginning at Tel Aviv and ending at Haifa. Furthermore, Highway 4 runs along the coast to the north of Haifa, as well as south, inland from Highway 2. In the past, traffic along Highway 2 to the north of Haifa had to pass through the downtown area of the city. The Carmel Tunnels, opened for traffic 1 December 2010, now route this traffic under Mount Carmel, reducing congestion in the downtown area.


title: Haifa

text: The main stadiums in Haifa are: Sammy Ofer Stadium, a UEFA-approved 30,858-seat stadium, completed in 2014, replacing the 14,002-seat Kiryat Eliezer Stadium that was demolished 2016, Thomas D'Alesandro Stadium and Neve Sha'anan Athletic Stadium that seats 1,000. The city's two main football clubs are Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Haifa who both currently play in the Israeli Premier League and share the Sammy Ofer Stadium as their home pitch. Maccabi has won twelve Israeli titles, while Hapoel has won one.


title: Haifa

text: Haifa has 4 professional basketball clubs. Hapoel Haifa and Maccabi Haifa both play in the Israeli Basketball Super League, the top division. They both also play at the Romema Arena, which seats 5,000.


title: Haifa

text: The city also has an American football club, the Haifa Underdogs, that are a part of the Israeli Football League and play in Yoqneam Stadium. The team lost in the championship game of the league's inaugural season, but won one title as part of American Football Israel, which merged with the Israeli Football League in 2005. The city has several clubs in the regional leagues, including Beitar Haifa in Liga Bet (the fourth tier) and Hapoel Ahva Haifa, F.C. Haifa Ruby Shapira and Maccabi Neve Sha'anan Eldad in Liga Gimel (the fifth tier). The Haifa Hawks are an ice hockey team based out of the city of Haifa. They participate in the Israeli League, the top level of Israeli ice hockey. In 1996, the city hosted the World Windsurfing Championship. The Haifa Tennis Club, near the southwest entrance to the city, is one of the largest in Israel.


title: Serinda Swan

text: Serinda Swan (born July 11, 1984) is a Canadian actress best known for her work on television. In 2017, she starred in Marvel's "Inhumans" and HBO's "Ballers", and also portrayed Anne Bancroft in the of "Feud" (2017). Previously, she guest starred on the WB/CW Superman prequel series "Smallville" as Zatanna Zatara, a DC Comics-inspired recurring character who is an actual magician. She also starred as Paige Arkin in the USA Network series "Graceland" (2013–2015) and as Erica Reed in the A&E series "Breakout Kings" (2011–2012). She currently stars as Jenny Cooper in the CBC/CW series "Coroner".


title: Serinda Swan

text: Swan was born in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her father, Scott Swan, is a Canadian theatre director and actor who runs an acting studio.


title: Serinda Swan

text: Her first acting job was in 1989, a small role in the Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini film "Cousins", when she was just five years old. One of her early on screen appearances as an adult was in Theory of a Deadman's music video for their single "So Happy", which was released in April 2008. Her first film credit was in 2009 in the romantic comedy "The Break-Up Artist".


title: Serinda Swan

text: From 2009 to 2010, she appeared twice on The CW television series "Smallville" (in the season 8 episode "Hex" and season 9 episode "Warrior") as Zatanna Zatara. She also had the role of the Roman goddess, Veritas, in the season six episode of "Supernatural", another The CW series, "You Can't Handle the Truth", in 2010.


title: Serinda Swan

text: From 2011 to 2012, Swan starred as Erica Reed in the A&E television series, "Breakout Kings". She shared that many of the prison scenes were shot in actual prisons, while real convicts are also there behind bars. The series was canceled on May 17, 2012.


title: Serinda Swan

text: Swan portrays Zera in the 2017 Brent Ryan Green film, "The Veil". In March 2017, it was announced that Swan would portray Medusa in the ABC and Marvel Television series "Inhumans". She starred on the series for one season, until 2018, when the series was canceled.


title: Serinda Swan

text: In late 2018, it was announced that Swan would star as the lead of CBC's forthcoming television series "Coroner", based on the Jenny Cooper series of novels by M. R. Hall. The series premiered in January 2019 and attracted one million viewers per episode throughout the first season. In June 2020, it was announced that American network, The CW, Serinda's original home from when she was on "Smallville", had picked up the show during COVID-19 pandemic due to the lockdowns of production sets on its other shows to fill primetime programming timeslots. The show premiered on August 5, 2020. And it attracted over 600,000 viewers approximately during each episode in the first season and grew more and more as the seasons continued for the network. As of October 2, 2022, Season 4 is currently airing. The series has completed 4 seasons. Release date for season 5 has not been announced yet. In June 2022, it was announced that Swan would be leaving the show, and would be potentially replacing by a new actress or actor with a new main character as the lead role. In September 2022, it was announced that she will be joining the cast for season 2 of the Amazon Prime Video series "Reacher".


title: Serinda Swan

text: Swan works with several charities including the Somaly Mam Foundation, United Nations Foundation's Nothing But Nets, and Heifer International. She is a Founding Ambassador for Friends to Mankind, which describes itself as a non-profit organization that works "with individuals, corporations, and humanitarian organizations for the betterment of humanity".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol. A classic example of a cumulative song, the lyrics detail a series of increasingly numerous gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day). The carol, whose words were first published in England in the late eighteenth century, has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. A large number of different melodies have been associated with the song, of which the best known is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: There are many variations in the lyrics. The lyrics given here are from Frederic Austin's 1909 publication that established the current form of the carol. The first three verses run, in full, as follows:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Subsequent verses follow the same pattern. Each verse deals with the next day of Christmastide, adding one new gift and then repeating all the earlier gifts, so that each verse is one line longer than its predecessor.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The earliest known publications of the words to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were an illustrated children's book, "Mirth Without Mischief", published in London in 1780, and a broadsheet by Angus, of Newcastle, dated to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: While the words as published in "Mirth without Mischief" and the Angus broadsheet were almost identical, subsequent versions (beginning with James Orchard Halliwell's "Nursery Rhymes of England" of 1842) have displayed considerable variation:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: (a) differences in wording, ignoring capitalisation and punctuation, are indicated in "italics" (including permutations, where for example the 10th day of Austin's version becomes the 9th day here);


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: A similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature. It has thirteen days rather than twelve, and the number of gifts does not increase in the manner of "The Twelve Days". Its final verse, as published in Chambers, "Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories, and Amusements of Scotland" (1842), runs as follows:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: "Pippin go aye" (also spelled "papingo-aye" in later editions) is a Scots word for peacock or parrot.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Similarly, Iceland has a Christmas tradition where "Yule Lads" put gifts in the shoes of children for each of the 13 nights of Christmas.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In the Faroe Islands, there is a comparable counting Christmas song. The gifts include: one feather, two geese, three sides of meat, four sheep, five cows, six oxen, seven dishes, eight ponies, nine banners, ten barrels, eleven goats, twelve men, thirteen hides, fourteen rounds of cheese and fifteen deer. These were illustrated in 1994 by local cartoonist Óli Petersen (born 1936) on a series of two stamps issued by the Faroese Philatelic Office.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In Blekinge and Småland, southern Sweden, a similar song was also sung. It featured one hen, two barley seeds, three grey geese, four pounds of pork, six flayed sheep, a sow with six pigs, seven åtting grain, eight grey foals with golden saddles, nine newly born cows, ten pairs of oxen, eleven clocks, and finally twelve churches, each with twelve altars, each with twelve priests, each with twelve capes, each with twelve coin-purses, each with twelve daler inside.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: "Les Douze Mois" ("The Twelve Months") (also known as "La Perdriole"—"The Partridge") is another similar cumulative verse from France that has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas". Its final verse, as published in de Coussemaker, "Chants Populaires des Flamands de France" (1856), runs as follows:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: According to de Coussemaker, the song was recorded "in the part of [French] Flanders that borders on the Pas de Calais".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Another similar folksong, "Les Dons de l'An", was recorded in the Cambresis region of France. Its final verse, as published in 1864, runs:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The exact origins and the meaning of the song are unknown, but it is highly probable that it originated from a children's memory and forfeit game.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting with Christmas Day to the day before Epiphany (5 January). Twelfth Night is defined by the "Oxford English Dictionary" as "the evening of January 5th, the day before Epiphany, which traditionally marks the end of Christmas celebrations".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The best known English version was first printed in "Mirth without Mischief", a children's book published in London around 1780. The work was heavily illustrated with woodcuts, attributed in one source to Thomas Bewick.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In the northern counties of England, the song was often called the "Ten Days of Christmas", as there were only ten gifts. It was also known in Somerset, Dorset, and elsewhere in England. The kinds of gifts vary in a number of the versions, some of them becoming alliterative tongue-twisters. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was also widely popular in the United States and Canada. It is mentioned in the section on "Chain Songs" in Stith Thompson's "Motif-Index of Folk-Literature" (Indiana University Studies, Vol. 5, 1935), p. 416.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: There is evidence pointing to the North of England, specifically the area around Newcastle upon Tyne, as the origin of the carol. Husk, in the 1864 excerpt quoted below, stated that the carol was "found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years", i.e. from approximately 1714. In addition, many of the nineteenth century citations come from the Newcastle area.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Peter and Iona Opie suggest that "if '[t]he partridge in the peartree' is to be taken literally it looks as if the chant comes from France, since the Red Leg partridge, which perches in trees more frequently than the common partridge, was not successfully introduced into England until about 1770".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Some authors suggest a connection to a religious verse entitled "Twelfth Day", found in a thirteenth century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge; this theory is criticised as "erroneous" by Yoffie. It has also been suggested that this carol is connected to the "old ballad" which Sir Toby Belch begins to sing in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Many early sources suggest that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was a "memory-and-forfeits" game, in which participants were required to repeat a verse of poetry recited by the leader. Players who made an error were required to pay a penalty, in the form of offering a kiss or confection.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Halliwell, writing in 1842, stated that "[e]ach child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake."


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Salmon, writing from Newcastle, claimed in 1855 that the song "[had] been, up to within twenty years, extremely popular as a schoolboy's Christmas chant".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Thomas Hughes, in a short story published in 1864, described a fictional game of Forfeits involving the song:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Scott (1892), reminiscing about Christmas and New Year's celebrations in Newcastle around the year 1844, described a performance thus:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: An anonymous "antiquarian", writing in 1867, speculated that "pear-tree" is a corruption of French "perdrix" (, "partridge"). This was also suggested by Anne Gilchrist, who observed in 1916 that "from the constancy in English, French, and Languedoc versions of the 'merry little partridge,' I suspect that 'pear-tree' is really "perdrix" (Old French "pertriz") carried into England". The variant text "part of a juniper tree", found as early as c. 1840, is likely not original, since "partridge" is found in the French versions. It is probably a corruption of "partridge in a pear tree", though Gilchrist suggests "juniper tree" could have been "joli perdrix", [pretty partridge].


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Another suggestion is that an old English drinking song may have furnished the idea for the first gift. William B. Sandys refers to it as a "convivial glee introduced a few years since, 'A Pie [i.e., a magpie] sat on a Pear Tree,' where one drinks while the others sing." The image of the bird in the pear tree also appears in lines from a children's counting rhyme an old Mother Goose.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Gilchrist suggests that the adjective "French" may mean "foreign". Sharp reports that one singer sings "Britten chains", which he interprets as a corruption of "Breton hens". William and Ceil Baring-Gould also suggest that the birds are Breton hens, which they see as another indication that the carol is of French origin.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The word "colly", found in the earliest publications, was the source of considerable confusion. Multiple sources confirm that it is a dialectal word, found in Somerset and elsewhere, meaning "black", so "colly birds" are blackbirds. Despite this, other theories about the word's origin are also found in the literature, such as that the word is a corruption of French "collet" ("ruff"), or of "coloured".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Shahn suggests that "the five golden rings refer to the ringed pheasant". William and Ceil Baring-Gould reiterate this idea, which implies that the gifts for first seven days are all birds. Others suggest the gold rings refer to "five goldspinks"—a goldspink being an old name for a goldfinch; or even canaries. However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: According to "The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes", "Suggestions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food or sport for each month of the year. Importance [certainly has] long been attached to the Twelve Days, when, for instance, the weather on each day was carefully observed to see what it would be in the corresponding month of the coming year. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems probable [that] the lines that survive today both in England and France are merely an irreligious travesty."


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In 1979, a Canadian hymnologist, Hugh D. McKellar, published an article, "How to Decode the Twelve Days of Christmas", in which he suggested that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" lyrics were intended as a catechism song to help young English Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practising Catholicism was against the law (from 1558 until 1829). McKellar offered no evidence for his claim. Three years later, in 1982, Fr. Hal Stockert wrote an article (subsequently posted on-line in 1995) in which he suggested a similar possible use of the twelve gifts as part of a catechism. The possibility that the twelve gifts were used as a catechism during the period of Catholic repression was also hypothesised in this same time period (1987 and 1992) by Fr. James Gilhooley, chaplain of Mount Saint Mary College of Newburgh, New York. Snopes.com, a website reviewing urban legends, Internet rumours, e-mail forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin, concludes that the hypothesis of the twelve gifts of Christmas being a surreptitious Catholic catechism is incorrect. None of the enumerated items would distinguish Catholics from Protestants, and so would hardly need to be secretly encoded.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The now-standard melody for the carol was popularised by the English baritone and composer Frederic Austin. The singer, having arranged the music for solo voice with piano accompaniment, included it in his concert repertoire from 1905 onwards. A "Times" review from 1906 praised the "quaint folk-song", while noting that "the words ... are better known than the excellent if intricate tune".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Austin's arrangement was published by Novello & Co. in 1909. According to a footnote added to the posthumous 1955 reprint of his musical setting, Austin wrote:


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: A number of later publications state that Austin's music for "five gold rings" is an original addition to an otherwise traditional melody. An early appearance of this claim is found in the 1961 "University Carol Book", which states: Similar statements are found in John Rutter's 1967 arrangement, and in the 1992 "New Oxford Book of Carols".


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music. This irregular meter perhaps reflects the song's folk origin. The introductory lines "On the ["n"th] day of Christmas, my true love gave to me", are made up of two bars, while most of the lines naming gifts receive one bar per gift with the exception of "Five gold rings", which receives two bars, "Two turtle doves" getting a bar with "And a" on its fourth beat and "partridge in a pear tree" getting two bars of music. In most versions, a bar of music immediately follows "partridge in a pear tree". "On the" is found in that bar on the fourth (pickup) beat for the next verse. The successive bars of three for the gifts surrounded by bars of four give the song its hallmark "hurried" quality.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: The second to fourth verses' melody is different from that of the fifth to twelfth verses. Before the fifth verse (when "Five gold rings" is first sung), the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelfth to sixth items. However, the melody for "four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves" changes from this point, differing from the way these lines were sung in the opening four verses.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In the final verse, Austin inserted a flourish on the words "Five gold rings". This has not been copied by later versions, which simply repeat the melody from the earlier verses.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: A melody, possibly related to the "traditional" melody on which Austin based his arrangement, was recorded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1870 and published in 1905.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Cecil Sharp's "Folk Songs from Somerset" (1905) contains two different melodies for the song, both distinct from the now-standard melody.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Several folklorists have recorded the carol using traditional melodies. Peter Kennedy recorded the Copper family of Sussex, England singing a version in 1955 which differs slightly from the common version, whilst Helen Hartness Flanders recorded several different versions in the 1930s and 40s in New England, where the song seems to have been particularly popular. Edith Fowke recorded a single version sung by Woody Lambe of Toronto, Canada in 1963, whilst Herbert Halpert recorded one version sung by Oscar Hampton and Sabra Bare in Morgantown, North Carolina One interesting version was also recorded in 1962 in Deer, Arkansas, performed by Sara Stone; the recording is available online courtesy of the University of Arkansas.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: Since 1984, the cumulative costs of the items mentioned in the song have been used as a tongue-in-cheek economic indicator. Assuming the gifts are repeated in full in each round of the song, then a total of 364 items are delivered by the twelfth day. This custom began with and is maintained by PNC Bank. Two pricing charts are created, referred to as the Christmas Price Index and The True Cost of Christmas. The former is an index of the current costs of one set of each of the gifts given by the True Love to the singer of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". The latter is the cumulative cost of all the gifts with the repetitions listed in the song. The people mentioned in the song are hired, not purchased. The total costs of all goods and services for the 2015 Christmas Price Index is US$34,130.99, or $155,407.18 for all 364 items. The original 1984 cost was $12,623.10. The index has been humorously criticised for not accurately reflecting the true cost of the gifts featured in the Christmas carol.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: John Julius Norwich's 1998 book, "The Twelve Days of Christmas (Correspondence)", uses the motif of repeating the previous gifts on each subsequent day, to humorous effect.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In the famous article "The Complexity of Songs", Donald Knuth computes the space complexity of the song as function of the number of days, observing that a hypothetical "The formula_1 Days of Christmas" requires a memory space of formula_2 as formula_3 where formula_4 is the length of the song, showing that songs with complexity lower than formula_5 indeed exist. Incidentally, it is also observed that the number of gift in formula_1 days amounts to formula_7.


title: The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

text: In 1988, a C program authored by Ian Phililipps won the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. The code, which according to the jury of the contest "looked like what you would get by pounding on the keys of an old typewriter at random", takes advantage of the recursive structure of The Twelve Days of Christmas to print the lyrics of the song. The code itself used to print the lyrics is shorter than the output compressed by standard algorithms.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptune ( ) is the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek tradition, he is a brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers preside over the realms of heaven, the earthly world (including the underworld), and the seas. Salacia is his wife.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those in North Africa, were influenced by Hellenistic conventions. He was likely associated with freshwater springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, he was also worshipped by the Romans as a god of horses, as "Neptunus equestris" (a patron of horse-racing).


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: The theology of Neptune is limited by his close identification with the Greek god Poseidon, one of many members of the Greek pantheon whose theology was later tied to a Roman deity. The "lectisternium" of 399 BC indicated that the Greek figures of Poseidon, Artemis, and Heracles had been introduced and worshipped in Rome as Neptune, Diana, and Hercules. It has been speculated that Neptune has been conflated with a Proto-Indo-European freshwater deity; since the Indo-Europeans lived inland and had little direct knowledge of the sea, the Romans may have reused the theology of a previous freshwater god in their worship of Neptune. Servius explicitly names Neptune as the god of rivers, springs, and waters; he may parallel the Irish god Nechtan, master of rivers and wells. This is in contrast to Poseidon, who was primarily a god of the sea.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptune has been associated with a number of other Roman deities. By the first century BC, he had supplanted Portunus as the god of naval victories; Sextus Pompeius called himself the "son of Neptune". For a time, Neptune was paired in his dominion of the sea with Salacia, the goddess of saltwater. Neptune was considered the legendary progenitor god of the Falisci (who called themselves "Neptunia proles"), joining Mars, Janus, Saturn, and Jupiter as the deific father of a Latin tribe.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptunalia, the Roman festival of Neptune, was held at the height of summer (typically on July 23). The date of the festival and the construction of tree-branch shelters suggest that Neptune was a god of water sources in times of drought and heat. The most ancient Roman calendar set the "feriae" of Neptunus on July 23, between the Lucaria festival of the grove and the Furrinalia festival of July 25. All three festivals were connected to water during the period of summer heat ("canicula") and drought, when freshwater sources were lowest.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: It has been speculated that the three festivals fall in a logical order. The "Lucaria" was devoted to clearing overgrown bushes and uprooting and burning excess vegetation. Neptunalia followed, devoted to conservation and the draining of superficial waters. These culminated in the "Furrinalia", sacred to Furrina (the goddess of springs and wells).


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptunalia was spent under branch huts in a woods between the Tiber and the Via Salaria, with participants drinking spring water and wine to escape the heat. It was a time of merrymaking, when men and women could mix without the usual Roman societal constraints. There is an added context of agricultural fertility in the festival, since Neptune received the sacrifice of a bull.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptune had only one temple in Rome. It stood near the Circus Flaminius, the Roman racetrack in the southern part of the Campus Martius, and dates back to at least 206 BC. The temple was restored out by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus c. 40 BC, an event depicted on a coin struck by the consul. Within the temple was a sculpture of a marine group by Scopas Minor. The Basilica Neptuni was later built on the Campus Martius, and was dedicated by Agrippa in honor of the naval victory of Actium. This basilica supplanted the older temple, which had replaced an ancient altar.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptune is one of only four Roman gods to whom it was considered appropriate to sacrifice a bull. The other three were Apollo, Mars, and Jupiter, although Jupiter has also been depicted with the offering of a red bull and a red-bull calf. If an incorrect offering was presented, either inadvertently or due to necessity, additional propitiation was required to avoid divine retribution. This type of offering implied a stricter connection between the deity and the world.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: "Paredrae" are entities who accompany a god, representing the fundamental aspects (or powers) of that god. With Hellenic influence, these "paredrae" came to be considered separate deities and consorts of their associated god. Earlier folk belief might have also identified "paredrae" as consorts of their god.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Salacia and Venilia have been discussed by ancient and modern scholars. Varro connects Salacia to "salum" (sea), and Venilia to "ventus" (wind). Festus attributed to Salacia the motion of the sea. Venilia brought waves to the shore, and Salacia caused their retreat out to sea. They were examined by the Christian philosopher St. Augustine, who devoted a chapter of "De Civitate Dei" to ridiculing inconsistencies in the theological definition of the entities; since Salacia personified the deep sea, Augustine wondered how she could also be the retreating waves (since waves are a surface phenomenon). He wrote elsewhere that Venilia would be the "hope that comes", an aspect (or power) of Jupiter understood as "anima mundi".


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Servius, in his commentary on the "Aeneid", wrote about Salacia and Venilia in V 724: ""(Venus) dicitur et Salacia, quae proprie meretricum dea appellata est a veteribus""; "(Venus) is also called Salacia, who was particularly named goddess of prostitutes by the ancient". Elsewhere, he wrote that Salacia and Venilia are the same entity.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Among modern scholars, Dumézil and his followers Bloch and Schilling centre their interpretation of Neptune on the direct, concrete, limited value and functions of water. Salacia would represent the forceful, violent aspect of gushing and overflowing water and Venilia the tranquil, gentle aspect of still (or slowly-flowing) water. According to Dumézil, Neptune's two "paredrae" (Salacia and Venilia) represent the overpowering and tranquil aspects of water, natural and domesticated: Salacia the gushing, overbearing waters, and Venilia the still (or quietly-flowing) waters.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Preller, Fowler, Petersmann and Takács attribute to the theology of Neptune broader significance as a god of universal worldly fertility, particularly relevant to agriculture and human reproduction. They interpret Salacia as personifying lust, and Venilia as related to "venia": ingratiating attraction, connected with love and the desire for reproduction. Ludwig Preller cited a significant aspect of Venilia; she was recorded in the "indigitamenta" as a deity of longing or desire. According to Preller, this would explain a theonym similar to that of Venus. Other data seem to agree; Salacia would parallel Thetis as the mother of Achilles, and Venilia would be the mother of Turnus and Iuturna by Daunus (king of the Rutulians). According to another source, Venilia would be the partner of Janus, with whom she mothered the nymph Canens (loved by Picus). These mythical data underline the reproductive function envisaged in the figures of Neptune's "paredrae", particularly that of Venilia, in childbirth and motherhood. A legendary king Venulus was remembered at Tibur and Lavinium.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Before Poseidon was known as the god of the sea, he was connected to the horse and may have originally been depicted in equine form. This connection reflects the violent and brutal nature of Poseidon the earth-shaker, the linkage of horses and springs, and the animal's psychopompous character. Neptune, in contrast, has no such direct connection with horses. The Roman deity Consus was associated with the horse, and his underground altar was in the valley of the Circus Maximus at the foot of the Palatine (the site of horse races). On the summer Consualia (August 21) it was customary to bring horses and mules, crowned with flowers, in procession and then hold equine races in the Circus. The festival also traditionally reenacted the abduction of the Sabine (and Latin) women, reflecting the sexual license characteristic of such festivals. On that day, the Flamen Quirinalis and the Vestal Virgins made sacrifices on the underground altar of Consus. The proximity of the two Consualia to the Opiconsivia (the latter were four days later, the winter festival on December 19) indicates the relationship between the two deities pertaining to agriculture. According to Dumézil, the horse has a much-different symbolic value in the theologies of Poseidon and Consus. Tertullian ("De Spectaculis" V 7) wrote that according to Roman tradition, Consus was the god who advised Romulus on the abduction of the Sabines.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Perhaps influenced by Poseidon Ίππιος, Consus (whose festival included horse races) was reinterpreted as "Neptunus equestris"; for his underground altar, he was identified with Poseidon Ένοσίχθων. The etymology of "Poseidon", derived from "Posis" (lord or husband) and "De" (grain or earth) may have contributed to the identification of Consus with Neptune. His arcane cult, which required the unearthing of the altar, indicate the deity's antiquity and chthonic nature. From Augustine ("De Civitate Dei" IV 8, about the role of Tutilina in assuring the safety of stored grain), Dumézil interprets its name as deriving from "condere" (to hide or store) as a verbal noun similar to Sancus and Janus: the god of stored grains. A direct identification of Consus with Poseidon is hindered by the fact that Poseidon is nowhere worshipped at underground shrines or altars.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Martianus Capella places Neptune and Consus together in region X of Heaven, possibly following an old "interpretatio graeca" of Consus or reflecting an Etruscan idea of a chthonic Neptune apparent in the recommendation of the "De Haruspicum Responso" for propitiating Neptune for the cracking sounds heard underground in the "ager latiniensis". The Etruscans were also fond of horse races.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: The Etruscan name of Neptune is Nethuns. It had been believed that Neptune derived from Etruscan, but this view has been disputed. Nethuns was apparently important to the Etruscans. His name is found in two places on the Liver of Piacenza: on the outer rim of section seven, and on the gallbladder of section 28. This last location aligns with Pliny the Elder's belief that the gallbladder was sacred to Neptune. The name "Nethuns" occurs eight times in columns VII, IX, and XI of the "Liber Linteus".


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: On a mirror from Tuscania (E. S. 1. 76), Nethuns is represented talking to Uśil (the sun) and Thesan (the goddess of dawn). Nethuns is seated on the left, holding a double-ended trident in his right hand and with his left arm raised as if giving instructions. Uśil is standing in the centre, holding Aplu's bow in his right hand. Thesan is on the right, with her right hand on Uśil's shoulder; both are listening intently to Nethuns' words. The identification of Uśil with Aplu (and his association with Nethuns) is emphasised by an anguiped demon holding two dolphins on an exergue. The scene highlights the identities and association of Nethuns and Aplu (here identified as Uśil) as main deities of the worldly realm and the life cycle. Thesan and Uśil-Aplu, who has been identified with Śuri (Soranus Pater, the underworld sun god) clarify the transience of earthly life.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Neptune is a god of fertility, including human fertility. According to Stephen Weinstock, Jupiter is present in each of the first three regions with different aspects related to each region; Neptune should have been in the second region, and Pluto in the third. The reason for Neptune's displacement to region X is unclear. It is consistent with the collocation in the third quadrant of the deities related to the human world.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Arnobius provides information about the theology of Neptune. Neptune and Apollo were considered Etruscan Penates, and the deities were credited with giving Ilium its walls. In another tradition based on the same source, the Etruscan Penates were Fortuna, Ceres, Genius Iovialis and Pales.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: The etymology of the Latin "Neptunus" is unclear and disputed. The ancient grammarian Varro derived the name from "nuptus" ("covering", "opertio"), alluding to "nuptiae" ("the marriage of Heaven and Earth").


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Among modern scholars, Paul Kretschmer proposed a derivation from the Indo-European "*neptu-" ("moist substance"). Raymond Bloch similarly theorised that it might be an adjectival form ("-no") of "*nuptu-" ("he who is moist").


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Georges Dumézil said that words deriving from the root "*nep-" are not attested in Indo-European languages other than Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan. He proposed an etymology which joins "Neptunus" with the Indian and Iranian theonyms Apam Napat and Apam Napá and the Old Irish theonym Nechtan, all meaning "descendant of the waters". Using a comparative approach, the Indo-Iranian, Avestan and Irish figures have common features with the Roman legends about Neptune. Dumézil proposed to derive the nouns from the Indo-European root "népōts-" ("descendant, sister's son"). His former student, Indo-Europeanist Jaan Puhvel, theorises that the name might have meant "child ("neve", nephew) of the water" as part of an Indo-European fire-in-water myth.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: A different etymology, grounded in the legendary history of Latium and Etruria, was proposed by the 19th-century scholars Ludwig Preller, Karl Otfried Müller and Wilhelm Deeke. The name of the Etruscan deity Nethuns or Nethunus ("NÈDVNVZ") would be an adjectival form of the toponym Nepe(t) or Nepete (present-day Nepi), near Falerii. The district was traditionally connected to the cult of Neptune, and Messapus and Halesus (the eponymous hero of Falerii) were believed to be his sons. Messapus led the Falisci (and others) to war in the "Aeneid". Nepi and Falerii have been known since antiquity for the quality of their meadow springwater. "Nepet" might be considered a hydronymic toponym of pre-Indo-European origin from a noun meaning "damp wide valley, plain", a cognate of the proto-Greek "νάπη" ("wooded vale, chasm").


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: In lectures delivered during the 1990s, German scholar Hubert Petersmann proposed an etymology from the Indo-European root "*nebh-" ("damp, wet") with the suffix "-tu" (for an abstract verbal noun) and the adjectival suffix "-no" (domain of activity). The root "*nebh-" gives the Sanskrit "nābhah", Hittite "nepis", Latin "nubs", "nebula", German "Nebel", and the Slavic "nebo". The concept would be close to that expressed in the name of the Greek god "Όυράνος" ("Uranus"), derived from the root "*hwórso-" ("to water or irrigate") and "*hworsó-" ("the irrigator").


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Petersmann proposes a different interpretation of Neptune's theology. Developing his understanding of the theonym as rooted in the Indo-European "*nebh", he writes that the god would be an ancient deity of the cloudy, rainy sky in company with (and in opposition to) Zeus/Jupiter, the god of clear skies. Similar to Caelus, he would be the father of all earthly things through the fertilising power of rain. The "hieros gamos" of Neptune and Earth is reflected in Virgil's "Aeneid" V 14 ("pater Neptunus"). Neptune's power would be reflected by Salacia, one of his "paredrae", who also denotes the overcast sky. His other "paredra", Venilia, is associated with the wind as well as the sea. The theonym Venilia may be rooted in "*venilis", a postulated adjective deriving from the IE root "*ven(h)" ("to love or desire") in the Sanskrit "vánati, vanóti" ("he loves"), German "Wonne", and the Latin Venus, "venia". Neptune's dual nature is found in Catullus 31. 3: ""uterque Neptunus"".


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: According to Petersmann, the ancient Indo-Europeans also venerated a god of wetness as the generator of life; this is indicated by the Hittite theonyms "nepišaš (D)IŠKURaš" or "nepišaš (D)Tarhunnaš" ("lord of sky wet"), the sovereign of Earth and humanity. Although this function was transferred to Zeus/Jupiter (the sovereigns of weather), the old function survived in literature: the "Aeneid" V 13-14 reads, ""Heu, quianam tanti cinxerunt aethera nimbi?/ quidve, pater Neptune, paras?"" ("What, why have so many clouds enringed the sky? What are you preparing, father Neptune?") The indispensability of water and its connexion to reproduction are universally known.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Müller and Deeke interpreted Neptune's theology as a divine ancestor of the Latin Faliscans: the father of Messapus and Halesus, their heroic founders. William Warde Fowler considered Salacia the personification of the virile potency which generated a Latin people, parallel with Mars, Saturn, Janus and Jupiter.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: Etruscan representations of Neptune are rare but significant. The oldest may be a fourth-century BC carved carnelian scarab from Vulci of Nethuns kicking a rock and creating a spring (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles. Another Etruscan artifact ("Nethunus", from the Luynes collection) depicts the god causing a horse to spring from the earth with a blow of his trident.


title: Neptune (mythology)

text: A late-fourth-century bronze mirror in the Vatican Museums (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco: C.S.E. Vaticano 1.5a) depicts Neptune with Amymone (daughter of Danaus), whom he saves from assault by a satyr and teaches the art of creating springs. On a bronze mirror from Tuscania dated to 350 BC, also in the Vatican Museums (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco E. S. 1. 76), Nethuns is talking to Usil and Thesan. He holds a double-ended trident, suggesting that he might be able wield lightning bolts.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Modern flat Earth beliefs are promoted by organizations and individuals which make claims that the Earth is flat while denying the Earth's sphericity, contrary to over two millennia of scientific consensus. Flat Earth beliefs are pseudoscience; the hypotheses and assertions are not based on scientific knowledge. Flat Earth advocates are classified by experts in philosophy and physics as science deniers.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Flat Earth groups of the modern era date from the middle of the 20th century; some adherents are serious and some are not. Those who are serious are often motivated by religion or conspiracy theories. Through the use of social media, flat Earth theories have been increasingly espoused and promoted by individuals unaffiliated with larger groups. Many believers make use of social media to spread their views.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: There is a popular yet false belief that the Earth was generally believed to be flat until a few hundred years ago. Earth's sphericity has been widely accepted in the Western world since at least the Hellenistic period (323 BCE–31 BCE). It was not until the 19th century that the Flat Earth concept had a resurgence.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Modern flat Earth belief originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884). Based on conclusions derived from his 1838 Bedford Level experiment, Rowbotham published the 1849 pamphlet titled "Zetetic Astronomy", writing under the pseudonym "Parallax". He later expanded this into the book "Earth Not a Globe", proposing the Earth is a flat disc centred at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, Antarctica. Rowbotham further held that the Sun and Moon were above Earth and that the "cosmos" was above the Earth. He also published a leaflet titled "The Inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures", which argued that the "Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the Earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Rowbotham and followers like William Carpenter gained attention by successful use of pseudoscience in public debates with leading scientists such as Alfred Russel Wallace. Rowbotham created a Zetetic Society in England and New York, shipping over a thousand copies of "Zetetic Astronomy". Wallace repeated the Bedford Level experiment in 1870, correcting for atmospheric refraction and showing a spherical Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 1877, Hampden produced a book "A New Manual of Biblical Cosmography". Rowbotham also produced studies that purported to show that the effects of ships disappearing below the horizon could be explained by the laws of perspective in relation to the human eye. In 1883, he founded Zetetic Societies in England and New York, to which he shipped a thousand copies of "Zetetic Astronomy".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: After Rowbotham's death, Lady Elizabeth Blount established the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893, whose objective was "the propagation of knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation". The society published a magazine, "The Earth Not a Globe Review", which sold for twopence and remained active well into the early 20th century. A flat Earth journal, "Earth: a Monthly Magazine of Sense and Science", was published between 1901 and 1904, edited by Lady Blount. She held that the Bible was the unquestionable authority on the natural world and argued that one could not be a Christian and believe the Earth is a globe. Well-known members included E. W. Bullinger of the Trinitarian Bible Society, Edward Haughton, senior moderator in natural science in Trinity College Dublin and an archbishop. She repeated Rowbotham's experiments, generating some counter-experiments, but interest declined after the First World War. The movement gave rise to several books that argued for a flat, stationary Earth, including "Terra Firma" by David Wardlaw Scott.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 1956, Samuel Shenton created the International Flat Earth Research Society as a successor to the Universal Zetetic Society, running it as "organising secretary" from his home in Dover, England. Given Shenton's interest in alternative science and technology, the emphasis on religious arguments was less than in the predecessor society. This was just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik; he responded: "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites."


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race eroded Shenton's support in Britain until 1967, when he started to become famous due to the Apollo program. When satellite images showed Earth as a sphere, Shenton remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye". Later asked about similar photographs taken by astronauts, he attributed curvature to the use of wide-angle lens, adding, "It's a deception of the public and it isn't right".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 1969, Shenton persuaded Ellis Hillman, a Polytechnic of East London lecturer, to become president of the Flat Earth Society; but there is little evidence of any activity on his part until after Shenton's death, when he added most of Shenton's library to the archives of the Science Fiction Foundation he helped to establish.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Shenton died in 1971. Charles K. Johnson, a correspondent from California, inherited part of Shenton's library from Shenton's wife; he incorporated and became president of the International Flat Earth Research Society of America and Covenant People's Church in California. Over the next three decades, under his leadership, the Flat Earth Society grew to a reported 3,500 members.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Johnson spent years examining the studies of flat- and round-Earth theories and proposed evidence of a conspiracy against flat Earth: "The idea of a spinning globe is only a conspiracy of error that Moses, Columbus, and FDR all fought..." His article was published in the magazine "Science Digest" in 1980. It goes on to state: "If it is a sphere, the surface of a large body of water must be curved. The Johnsons have checked the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea without detecting any curvature."


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Johnson issued many publications and handled all membership applications. The most famous publication was "Flat Earth News," a quarterly, four-page tabloid. Johnson paid for these publications through annual member dues costing US$6 to US$10 over the course of his leadership. Johnson cited the Bible for his beliefs, and he saw scientists as pulling a hoax which would replace religion with science.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The Flat Earth Society's most recent planet model is that humanity lives on a disc, with the North Pole at its centre and a wall of ice, Antarctica, at the outer edge. The resulting map resembles the symbol of the United Nations, which Johnson used as evidence for his position. In this model, the Sun and Moon are each in diameter.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The Flat Earth Society recruited members by speaking against the US government and all its agencies, particularly NASA. Much of the society's literature in its early days focused on interpreting the Bible to mean that the Earth is flat, although they did try to offer scientific explanations and evidence.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Eugenie Scott called the group an example of "extreme Biblical-literalist theology: The earth is flat because the Bible says it is flat, regardless of what science tells us".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: According to some flat Earthers, the Flat Earth Society is a government-controlled organization whose true purpose is to make ridiculous claims about flat Earth and therefore discredit the flat Earth movement.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: According to Charles K. Johnson, the membership of the group rose to 3,500 under his leadership but began to decline after a fire at his house in 1997 which destroyed all of the records and contacts of the society's members. Johnson's wife, who helped manage the membership database, died shortly thereafter. Johnson himself died on 19 March 2001.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 2004, Daniel Shenton (not related to Samuel) resurrected the Flat Earth Society, basing it around a web-based discussion forum. He believes that no one has provided proof that the world is not flat.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: This eventually led to the official relaunch of the society in October 2009, and the creation of a new website, featuring a public collection of flat Earth literature and a wiki. Moreover, the society began accepting new members for the first time since 2001, with musician Thomas Dolby becoming the first to join the newly reconvened society. , over 500 people have become members.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 2013, part of this society broke away to form a new web-based group also featuring a forum and wiki.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Flat Earth Society of Canada was established on 8 November 1970 by philosopher Leo Ferrari, writer Raymond Fraser and poet Alden Nowlan; and was active until 1984. Its archives are held at the University of New Brunswick.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Calling themselves "planoterrestrialists", their aims were quite different from other flat Earth societies. They claimed a prevailing problem of the new technological age was the willingness of people to accept theories "on blind faith and to reject the evidence of their own senses." The parodic intention of the Society appeared in the writings of Ferrari, as he attributed everything from gender to racial inequality on the globularist and the spherical Earth model. Ferrari even claimed to have nearly fallen off "the Edge" of the Earth at Brimstone Head on Fogo Island.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Ferrari was interviewed as an "expert" in the 1990 flat Earth mockumentary "In Search of the Edge" by Pancake Productions (a reference to the expression "as flat as a pancake"). In the accompanying study guide, Ferrari is outed as a "globularist", a nonce word for someone who believes the Earth is spherical. The real intent of the film, which was part-funded by the Ontario Arts Council and National Film Board of Canada, was to promote schoolchildren's critical thinking and media literacy by "[attempting] to prove in convincing fashion, something everyone knew to be false."


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Multi-media artist Kay Burns re-created the Flat Earth Society of Canada as an art project with her alter ego Iris Taylor as its president. Burns created an installation entitled the Museum of the Flat Earth, which included some artefacts from the 1970 group. It was exhibited in 2016 at the Flat Earth Outpost Café in Shoal Bay, Newfoundland.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In Italy there are no centralised societies on flat Earth. However, since the 2010s, small groups of conspiracy theorists, who carry out meetings, started to emerge and to spread flat Earth theories. Among these are Calogero Greco, Albino Galuppini and Agostino Favari, who organised in 2018–2019 several meetings in Palermo, Sicily, with an entry price of €20.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In addition to these, it is their common belief that the United States has a plan to create in Europe a new America open to everyone, where the only value is consumerism and that George Soros commands a satanic globalist conspiracy. They reject the past existence of dinosaurs, the Darwinian theory of evolution, and the authority of the scientific community, claiming scientists are Freemasons.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Former leader of the Five Star Movement political party Beppe Grillo showed interest in the group, admitting to admiring their free speech spirit and to wanting to participate at the May 2019 conference. In the end, however, Grillo did not appear.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In the Information Age, the availability of communications technology and social media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have made it easy for individuals, famous or not, to spread disinformation and attract others to erroneous ideas. One of the topics that has flourished in this environment is that of the flat Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: These sites have made it easier for like-minded theorists to connect with one another and mutually reinforce their beliefs. Social media has had a "levelling effect", in that experts have less sway in the public mind than they used to.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: YouTube had faced criticism for allowing the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories through its platform. In 2019, YouTube stated that it was making changes in its software to reduce the distribution of videos based on conspiracy theories including flat Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 2018, the documentary "Behind the Curve" was released, which follows prominent modern flat-Earthers including Mark Sargent and Patricia Steere, as well as astrophysicists and psychologists who attempt to explain the growing fad. Dr. Joe Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, blamed the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people who know very little think of themselves as experts; misunderstandings of simple observation; pseudoscientific practices which fail to separate reliable from unreliable conclusions; and a progressive divergence from reality that starts with a belief that conventional information sources and the government aren't to be trusted.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Modern flat-Earthers generally embrace some form of conspiracy theory out of the necessity of explaining why major institutions such as governments, media outlets, schools, scientists, and airlines all assert that the world is a sphere. They tend to not trust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust or disagree with each other. Patricia Steere admitted in "Behind the Curve" that she wouldn't believe an event like the Boston Marathon bombing was real unless she had gotten her own leg blown off. Flat Earth believers in the documentary also professed belief in conspiracy theories about vaccines, genetically modified organisms, chemtrails, 9/11, and transgender people; some said dinosaurs and evolution were also fake, and that heliocentrism is a form of Sun worship.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The scientific experts in "Behind the Curve" pointed to confirmation bias as a way to maintain a counterfactual belief, by cherry-picking only supporting evidence, and dismissing any disconfirming evidence as part of the purported global conspiracy.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Some flat Earth believers, such as authors Zen Garcia and Edward Hendrie cite the Christian Bible as evidence. Some critics of the flat Earth idea, such as astronomer Danny R. Faulkner, are young Earth creationists and attempt to explain away the Bible's flat Earth language.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On 3 May 2018, Steven Novella analysed the modern belief in a flat Earth, and concluded that, despite what most people think about the subject, the believers are being sincere in their belief that the Earth is flat, and are not "just saying that to wind us up". He stated that:


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The British sceptical activist Michael Marshall attended the UK's annual Flat Earth UK Convention on 27–29 April 2018 and noted disagreement on several views of the believers in a flat Earth. To Marshall, one of the most telling moments at the convention was the "Flat Earth Addiction" test that was based on a checklist used to determine whether someone is in a cult, without the convention attendees realising the possibility of themselves being in a cult.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Based on the speakers at the 2018 UK's Flat Earth UK Convention, believers in a flat Earth vary widely in their views. While most agree upon a disc-shaped Earth, some are convinced the Earth is diamond-shaped. Furthermore, while most believers do not believe in outer space and none believe humans have ever travelled there, they vary widely in their views of the universe.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Filmmakers of "Behind the Curve" attended another flat Earth conference at which a substantial number of people believed the Earth was an infinite plane, potentially with more continents beyond the purported circular ice wall of Antarctica. Some flat Earth believers are so conspiratorial they suspect other flat Earth believers are also somehow part of the global conspiracy and aren't to be trusted. In the documentary, conference attendees were warned against attending by Math Powerland a.k.a. Matt Boylan, who posted videos alleging others were working for the CIA or Warner Brothers.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Members of the Flat Earth Society and other flat-Earthers claim that NASA and other government agencies conspire to fabricate evidence that the Earth is spherical. According to the most widely spread version of current flat-Earth theory, NASA is guarding the Antarctic ice wall that surrounds Earth. Flat-Earthers argue that NASA manipulates and fabricates its satellite images, based on observations that the color of the oceans changes from image to image and that continents seem to be in different places. The publicly perpetuated image is kept up through a large-scale practice of "compartmentalization", according to which only a select number of individuals have knowledge about the truth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Research on the arguments that flat Earthers wield shows three distinct factions, each one subscribing to its own set of beliefs.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The first faction subscribes to a faith-based conflict in which atheists use science to suppress the Christian faith. Their argument is that atheists use pseudo-science – evolution, Big Bang, and the round Earth – to make people believe that God is an abstract idea, not real. Instead, their arguments use the Scripture – word-by-word- to support an argument that enables God to really exist above us. This faction frames flat-Earth arguments as revelatory.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The second faction believes in an overarching conspiracy for knowledge suppression. Building upon the premise that knowledge is power, the flat Earth conspiracy argues that a shadowy group of "elites" control knowledge to remain in power. In their view, lying about the fundamental nature of the Earth primes the population to believe a host of other conspiracies. This faction frames flat-Earth arguments as liberatory.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The third faction believes that knowledge is personal and experiential. They are skeptical of knowledge that comes from authoritative sources, especially government-sanctioned "experts", especially book knowledge. This faction would like to find out themselves whether the Earth truly is round or flat. Because they distrust book knowledge and mathematical proof, this faction believes that the Earth is flat because their observations and lived experiences make it appear as if we live on a flat surface. This faction frames flat-Earth arguments as experimental.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Organisations sceptical of fringe beliefs have occasionally performed tests to demonstrate the local curvature of the Earth. One of these, conducted by members of the Independent Investigations Group, at the Salton Sea on 10 June 2018 was attended also by supporters of a flat Earth, and the encounter between the two groups was recorded by the National Geographic Explorer. This experiment successfully demonstrated the curvature of the Earth via the disappearance over distance of boat-based and shore-based targets.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The 2018 documentary "Behind the Curve" followed two groups of American flat Earth believers who were attempting to gather first-hand empirical proof for that belief. One group from the YouTube show GlobeBusters used a ring laser gyroscope in an attempt to show the Earth was not rotating. Instead, they detected the actual 15-degree-per-hour rotation of the Earth, a measurement they dismissed as corrupted by the device somehow picking up the rotation of the "firmament". Another group used lasers in an attempt to show a several-mile stretch of water is perfectly flat by measuring the distance between the water level and the laser beam along three vertical posts. They were unable to align the beam as they expected to because the surface of the still water was in fact bent by several feet over the distance measured; the experiment was dismissed as inconclusive.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: "Behind the Curve" illustrated how flat Earth believers rely on poorly-verified claims. Mark Sargent claimed to have watched flightaware.com for a very long time to check if any flights traveled between continents in the Southern Hemisphere, which in his disc model would be much further apart than they are on the globe. He claimed to see no such flights, and took this as evidence for the disc model. Caltech astrophysicist Hannalore Gerling-Dunsmore went to the site and immediately found flights that contradicted Sargent's claims.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The solar eclipse of 21 August 2017 gave rise to numerous YouTube videos purporting to show how the details of the eclipse prove the Earth is flat. In 2017, "the Tunisian and Arab scientific and educational world" had a scandal when a PhD student submitted a thesis "declaring Earth to be flat, unmoving, young (only 13,500 years of age), and the centre of the universe".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In 2018, astronomer Yaël Nazé analyzed the controversy over a Ph.D. dissertation proposed by a student at the University of Sfax in Tunisia, which defended a flat Earth, as well as a geocentric model of the solar system and a young Earth. The dissertation, which had not been approved by the committee overseeing environmental studies theses, had been made public and denounced in 2017 by Hafedh Ateb, a founder of the Tunisian Astronomical Society, on his Facebook page.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In March 2019, social media personality Logan Paul released a satirical documentary film about the flat Earth called "FLAT EARTH: To The Edge And Back".


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The Flat Earth Society has a Twitter account, @FlatEarthOrg. This account shares information about their group and promotes flat Earth ideologies.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Mike Hughes, a daredevil and flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, used a homebuilt crewed-rocket in an attempt to see for himself if the Earth is flat on 24 March 2018. His rocket made of scrap metal was estimated to cost $20,000, and using a mobile home as a custom launchpad managed to climb with Hughes inside and ended with a hard landing but with parachutes successfully deploying. The amateur rocketeer was not seriously injured and remained firm in his flat Earth beliefs. He claimed that real evidence will come with "larger rockets". Hughes was killed in an accident on 22 February 2020 while piloting a flight of his steam-powered rocket in a further attempt to prove the Earth was flat. The accident was caused by an early deployment and separation of the return parachute on the vehicle. The rocket impacted after falling from an altitude of several hundred feet. Hughes was killed instantly.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: After Hughes' death, his public relations representative Darren Shuster stated that Hughes "didn't believe in flat Earth" and that it was "a PR stunt" to get publicity, while Michael Linn, who worked on the documentary "Rocketman: Mad Mike's Mission to Prove the Flat-Earth", said that Hughes' belief appeared genuine.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: "Behind the Curve" filmmakers spoke with several people who said that as a result of their flat Earth beliefs they had lost romantic partners and no longer spoke to many friends and family. One said he was tired of being told he was an idiot. The Facebook group Flat Earth Match is a dating site used by some to find romantic partners who share these beliefs. Experts pointed out that after social ties to people outside the flat Earth community are lost, one consequence of abandoning the flat Earth belief would be loss of all remaining relationships.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Caltech physicist Spiros Michaelakis opined that instead of looking down on flat Earthers, scientists should do a better job of teaching scientific facts. Various scientific and medical experts in the documentary supported improving scientific literacy and avoiding marginalization of flat Earthers. They pointed out that people who distrust all of science, including truths about vaccines, evolution, and climate change, would make poorly informed-decisions, and that people who do not exercise the skill of critical thinking can be easily manipulated. They also pointed out that some believers were motivated to spread false ideas, and that because they are unconstrained by facts they can mutate and become less harmless than a mere belief about the shape of the Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The roughly spherical shape of Earth can be confirmed by many different types of observation from ground level, aircraft, and spacecraft. The shape causes a number of phenomena that a flat Earth would not. Some of these phenomena and observations would be possible on other shapes, such as a curved disk or torus, but no other shape would explain all of them.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On a flat Earth without obstructions, the ground itself would never obscure distant objects; it would be possible to see all the way to the edge of the world. A spherical surface has a horizon which is closer when viewed from a lower altitude. In theory, a person standing on the surface with eyes above the ground can see the ground up to about away, but a person at the top of the Eiffel Tower at can see the ground up to about away.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: This phenomenon permits a way of confirming that Earth's surface is locally convex: If the degree of curvature is determined to be the same everywhere on Earth's surface, and that surface was determined to be large enough, the constant curvature would show that Earth is spherical. In practice, this method is not reliable because of variations in atmospheric refraction, which is how much the atmosphere bends light traveling through it. Refraction can give the impression that Earth's surface is flat, curved more convexly than it is, or even that it is concave (this is what happened in various trials of the Bedford Level experiment).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The phenomenon of variable atmospheric bending can be seen when distant objects appear to be broken into pieces or even turned upside down. This is often seen at sunset, when the Sun's shape is distorted, but has also been photographed happening to ships, and has caused the city of Chicago to appear normally, upside down, and broken into pieces from across Lake Michigan (from where it is normally below the horizon).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: When the atmosphere is relatively well-mixed, the visual effects generally expected of a spherical Earth can be observed. For example, ships travelling on large bodies of water (such as the ocean) disappear over the horizon progressively, such that the highest part of the ship can still be seen even when lower parts cannot, proportional to distance from the observer. Likewise, in the days of sailing ships, a sailor would climb up a mast to see farther. The same is true of the coastline or mountain when viewed from a ship or from across a large lake or flat terrain.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is always a dark circle that moves from one side of the Moon to the other (partially grazing it during a partial eclipse). The only shape that casts a round shadow no matter which direction it is pointed is a sphere, and the ancient Greeks deduced that this must mean Earth is spherical.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The effect could be produced by a disk that always faces the Moon head-on during the eclipse, but this is inconsistent with the fact that the Moon is only rarely directly overhead during an eclipse. For each eclipse, the local surface of Earth is pointed in a different direction. The shadow of a disk held at an angle is an oval, not a circle as is seen during the eclipse. The idea of Earth being a disk is also inconsistent with the fact that a given lunar eclipse is only visible from half of Earth at a time.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The Moon's tidal lock to Earth results in the Moon always showing only one side to Earth (see animated image). If Earth were flat, with the Moon hovering above it, then the portion of the Moon's surface visible to people on Earth would vary according to location on Earth, rather than showing an identical "face side" to everyone. If Earth were flat, with the Moon revolving around it tidally locked, then the Moon would be seen simultaneously at all places on Earth at once, but its apparent size, the portion facing the viewer, and facing side's orientation would gradually change for each viewer as its position moved across the sky over the course of the night.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On a perfectly spherical Earth, not considering obstructions and atmospheric refraction, its surface blocks half the sky for an observer close against the surface. Moving away from the surface of Earth means that the ground blocks less and less of the sky. For example, when viewed from the Moon, Earth blocks only a small portion of the sky because it is so distant. This effect of geometry means that, when viewed from a high mountain, flat ground or ocean blocks less than 180° of the sky. With the presumption of a spherical Earth, an expedition commissioned by caliph al-Ma'mun used this fact to calculate Earth's circumference to within of the correct value of around , and possibly as accurately as . The rate of change in the angle blocked by Earth as altitude increases would be different for a disk than for a sphere. The amount of surface blocked would be different for a mountain close to the edge of a flat Earth compared to a mountain in the middle of a flat Earth, but this is not observed. Surveys from all over Earth show that its shape is everywhere locally convex, confirming that it is very close to spherical.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The fixed stars can be demonstrated to be very far away by diurnal parallax measurements. Such measurements show no shifts in the stars' positions. Unlike the Sun, Moon, and planets, they do not change position with respect to one another over human lifetimes; the shapes of the constellations are constant. This makes them a convenient reference background for determining the shape of Earth. Adding distance measurements on the ground allows calculation of Earth's size.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The fact that different stars are visible from different locations on Earth was noticed in ancient times. Aristotle wrote that some stars are visible from Egypt which are not visible from Europe. This would not be possible if Earth was flat.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: A star has an altitude above the horizon for an observer if the star is visible. Observing the same star at the same time from two different latitudes gives two different altitudes. Using geometry, the two altitudes along with the distance between the two locations allows for a calculation of Earth's size. Using observations at Rhodes (in Greece) and Alexandria (in Egypt) and the distance between them, the Ancient Greek philosopher Posidonius used this technique to calculate the circumference of the planet to within perhaps 4% of the correct value. Modern equivalents of his units of measure are not precisely known, so it is not clear how accurate his measurement was.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The fact that some stars are only visible from either the north or south poles must mean that the two observation spots are on opposite sides of Earth, which is not possible if Earth is a single-sided disk, but is possible for other shapes (like a sphere, but also any other convex shape like a donut or dumbbell).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The North Pole is in continuous night for six months of the year. The star Polaris (the "North Star") is almost directly overhead and therefore at the center of this rotation. Some of the 88 modern constellations visible are Ursa Major (including the Big Dipper), Cassiopeia, and Andromeda. The other six months of the year, the North Pole is in continuous daylight, with light from the Sun blotting out the stars. This phenomenon, and its analogous effects at the South Pole, are what defines the two poles. More than 24 hours of continuous daylight can only occur north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle.)


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: At the South Pole, a completely different set of constellations are visible during the six months of continuous night, including Crux, and Centaurus. This 180° hemisphere of stars rotates clockwise once every 24 hours around a point directly overhead.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: From any point on the equator, all of the stars visible anywhere on Earth on that day are visible at some time during the year as the sky rotates around a line drawn from due north to due south. When facing east, the stars visible from the north pole are on the left, and the stars visible from the south pole are on the right.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The direction any intermediate spot on Earth is facing can also be calculated by measuring the angles of the fixed stars and determining how much of the sky is visible. For example, New York City is about 40° north of the equator. The apparent motion of the Sun blots out slightly different parts of the sky from day to day, but over the course of the entire year it sees a dome of 280° (360° - 80°). So for example, both Orion and the Big Dipper are visible during at least part of the year.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Making stellar observations from a representative set of points across Earth, combined with knowing the shortest on-the-ground distance between any two given points, makes an approximate sphere the only possible shape for Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On a flat Earth, a Sun that shines in all directions would illuminate the entire surface at the same time, and all places would experience sunrise and sunset at the horizon at about the same time. With a spherical Earth, half the planet is in daylight at any given time and the other half experiences nighttime. When a given location on the spherical Earth is in sunlight, its antipodethe location exactly on the opposite side of Earthis in darkness. The spherical shape of Earth causes the Sun to rise and set at different times in different places, and different locations get different amounts of sunlight each day.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In order to explain day and night, time zones, and the seasons, some flat Earth conjecturists propose that the Sun does not emit light in all directions, but acts more like a spotlight, only illuminating part of the flat Earth at a time. This conjecture is not consistent with observation: At sunrise and sunset, a spotlight Sun would be up in the sky at least a little bit, rather than at the horizon where it is always actually observed. A spotlight Sun would also appear at different angles in the sky with respect to a flat ground than it does with respect to a curved ground. Assuming light travels in straight lines, actual measurements of the Sun's angle in the sky from locations very distant from each other are only consistent with a geometry where the Sun is very far away and is being seen from the daylight half of a spherical Earth. These two phenomena are related: A low-altitude spotlight Sun would spend most of the day near the horizon for most locations on Earth, which is not observed, but rise and set fairly close to the horizon. A high-altitude Sun would spend more of the day away from the horizon, but rise and set fairly far from the horizon, which is also not observed.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On a flat Earth with an omnidirectional Sun, all places would experience the same amount of daylight every day, and all places would get daylight at the same time. Actual day length varies considerably, with places closer to the poles getting very long days in the summer and very short days in the winter, with northerly summer happening at the same time as southerly winter. Places north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle get no sunlight for at least one day a year, and get 24-hour sunlight for at least one day a year. Both the poles experience sunlight for 6 months and darkness for 6 months, at opposite times.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The movement of daylight between the northern and southern hemispheres happens because of the axial tilt of Earth. The imaginary line around which Earth spins, which goes between the North Pole and South Pole, is tilted about 23° from the oval that describes its orbit around the Sun. Earth always points in the same direction as it moves around the Sun, so for half the year (summer in the Northern Hemisphere), the North Pole is pointed slightly toward the Sun, keeping it in daylight all the time because the Sun lights up the half of Earth that is facing it (and the North Pole is always in that half due to the tilt). For the other half of the orbit, the South Pole is tilted slightly toward the Sun, and it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that at the equator, the Sun is not directly overhead at noon, except around the March and September equinoxes, when one spot on the equator is pointed directly at the Sun.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The length of the day varies because as Earth rotates, some places (near the poles) pass through only a short curve near the top or bottom of the sunlight half; other places (near the equator) travel along much longer curves through the middle. In locations just outside the polar circles, there are so-called "white nights" in the middle of summer, in which the sun is never more than a few degrees below the horizon in June such that a bright twilight persists from sunset to sunrise. In Russia, Saint Petersburg uses this phenomenon in its tourist marketing.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Longer twilights are observed at higher latitudes (near the poles) due to a shallower angle of the Sun's apparent movement compared to the horizon. On a flat Earth, the Sun's shadow would reach the upper atmosphere very quickly, except near the closest edge of Earth, and would always set at the same angle to the ground (which is not what is observed).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The length of twilight would be very different on a flat Earth. On a round Earth, the atmosphere above the ground is lit for a while before sunrise and after sunset are observed at ground level, because the Sun is still visible from higher altitudes.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The "spotlight Sun" conjecture is also not consistent with this observation, since the air cannot be lit without the ground below it also being lit (except for shadows of mountains, hi-rises and other surface obstacles).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: It is possible to see sun-lit windows of nearby high-rise buildings from ground level a few minutes before seeing the sun rise or after seeing the sun set. On a non-curved, flat landmass it would only take seconds, due to minuscule ratio (compare ~45 meters / 150 feet of a 14-story building to intercontinental distances). If such a phenomenon were caused by a prismatic property of atmosphere in a flat world, with a relatively small source of light revolving around Earth (as in later, 1800's-dated, maps of Flat Earth), it would contradict with one's ability to see a proper panorama of starry sky at a time at night, rather than a small yet distorted, "stretched" patch of it.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On level ground, the difference in the distance to the horizon between lying down and standing up is large enough to watch the Sun set twice by quickly standing up immediately after seeing it set for the first time while lying down. This also can be done with an aerial work platform or with a fast elevator. On a flat Earth or a significantly large flat segment, it would not be possible to see the Sun again (unless standing near the edge closest to the Sun) due to a much faster-moving Sun shadow.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Ancient timekeeping reckoned "noon" as the time of day when the Sun is highest in the sky, with the rest of the hours in the day measured against that. During the day, the apparent solar time can be measured directly with a sundial. In ancient Egypt, the first known sundials divided the day into 12 hours, though because the length of the day changed with the season, the length of the hours also changed. Sundials that defined hours as always being the same duration appeared in the Renaissance. In Western Europe, clock towers and striking clocks were used in the Middle Ages to keep people nearby appraised of the local time, though compared to modern times this was less important in a largely agrarian society.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Because the Sun reaches its highest point at different times for different longitudes (about four minutes of time for every degree of longitude difference east or west), the local solar noon in each city is different except for those directly north or south of each other. This means that the clocks in different cities could be offset from each other by minutes or hours. As clocks became more precise and industrialization made timekeeping more important, cities switched to mean solar time, which ignores minor variations in the timing of local solar noon over the year, due to the elliptical nature of Earth's orbit, and its tilt.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The differences in clock time between cities was not generally a problem until the advent of railroad travel in the 1800s, which both made travel between distant cities much faster than by walking or horse, and also required passengers to show up at specific times to meet their desired trains. In the United Kingdom, railroads gradually switched to Greenwich Mean Time (set from local time at the Greenwich observatory in London), followed by public clocks across the country generally, forming a single time zone. In the United States, railroads published schedules based on local time, then later based on standard time for that railroad (typically the local time at the railroad's headquarters), and then finally based on four standard time zones shared across all railroads, where neighboring zones differed by exactly one hour. At first railroad time was synchronized by portable chronometers, and then later by telegraph and radio signals.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: San Francisco is at 122.41°W longitude and Richmond, Virginia is at 77.46°W longitude. They are both at about 37.6°N latitude (±.2°). The approximately 45° of longitude difference translates into about 180 minutes, or 3 hours, of time between sunsets in the two cities, for example. San Francisco is in the Pacific Time zone, and Richmond is in the Eastern Time zone, which are three hours apart, so the local clocks in each city show that the Sun sets at about the same time when using the local time zone. But a phone call from Richmond to San Francisco at sunset will reveal that there are still three hours of daylight left in California.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Under the assumption that the Sun is very far away, the ancient Greek geographer Eratosthenes performed an experiment using the differences in the observed angle of the Sun from two different locations to calculate the circumference of Earth. Though modern telecommunications and timekeeping were not available, he was able to make sure the measurements happened at the same time by having them taken when the Sun was highest in the sky (local noon) at both locations. Using slightly inaccurate assumptions about the locations of two cities, he came to a result within 15% of the correct value. While his results could theoretically also be compatible with a Flat Earth if the light rays from the Sun are assumed not to be parallel, many people have repeated the experiment with three or more data points and found results unambiguously supporting the globe model.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: On a given day, if many different cities measure the angle of the Sun at local noon, the resulting data, when combined with the known distances between cities, shows that Earth has 180 degrees of north-south curvature. (A full range of angles will be observed if the north and south poles are included, and the day chosen is either the autumnal or spring equinox.) This is consistent with many rounded shapes, including a sphere, and is inconsistent with a flat shape.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Some claim that this experiment assumes a very distant Sun, such that the incoming rays are essentially parallel, and if a flat Earth is assumed, that the measured angles can allow one to calculate the distance to the Sun, which must be small enough that its incoming rays are not very parallel. However, if more than two relatively well-separated cities are included in the experiment, the calculation will make clear whether the Sun is distant or nearby. For example, on the equinox, the 0 degree angle from the North Pole and the 90 degree angle from the equator predict a Sun which would have to be located essentially next to the surface of a flat Earth, but the difference in angle between the equator and New York City would predict a Sun much further away if Earth is flat. Because these results are contradictory, the surface of Earth cannot be flat; the data are, instead, consistent with a nearly spherical Earth and a Sun which is very far away compared with the diameter of Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The first circumnavigation of the Earth by the Magellan expedition lost a day, confirmed by subsequent circumnavigations, which eventually led to the creation of the International Date Line.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The shortest way to travel between two distant points is by great circle navigation, as known by ocean navigators for some time. This route shows as curved on any map except for one using a gnomonic projection. Radio waves also follow a great circle, so navies have produced maps using gnomonic projection for use in radio direction finding to locate enemy warships.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Since the 1500s, many people have sailed or flown completely around Earth in all directions, and none have discovered an edge or impenetrable barrier. (See Arctic exploration and History of Antarctica.)


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Some flat Earth conjectures that propose that Earth is a north-pole-centered disk conceive of Antarctica as an impenetrable ice wall that encircles the planet and hides any edges. This disk model explains east-west circumnavigation as simply moving around the disk in a circle. (East-west paths form a circle in both disk and spherical geometry.) It is possible in this model to traverse the North Pole, but it would not be possible to perform a circumnavigation that includes the South Pole (which it posits does not exist).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The Arctic Circle is roughly long, as is the Antarctic Circle. A "true circumnavigation" of Earth is defined, in order to account for the shape of Earth, to be about 2.5 times as long, including a crossing of the equator, at about . On the flat Earth model, the ratios would require the Antarctic Circle to be 2.5 times the length of the circumnavigation, or 2.5 × 2.5 = 6.25 times the length of the Arctic Circle.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Explorers, government researchers, commercial pilots, and tourists have been to Antarctica and found that it is not a large ring that encircles the entirety of Earth, but actually a roughly disk-shaped continent smaller than South America but larger than Australia, with an interior that can in fact be traversed in order to take a shorter path from, for example, the tip of South America to Australia than would be possible on a disk.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The first land crossing of the entirety of Antarctica was the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1955–1958, and many exploratory airplanes have since passed over the continent in various directions.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: A meridian of longitude is a line where local solar noon occurs at the same time each day. These lines define "north" and "south". These are perpendicular to lines of latitude that define "east" and "west", where the Sun is at the same angle at local noon on the same day. If the Sun were travelling from east to west over a flat Earth, meridian lines would always be the same distance apartthey would form a square grid when combined with lines of latitude. In reality, meridian lines get farther apart as one travels toward the equator, which is only possible on a round Earth. In places where land is plotted on a grid system, this causes discontinuities in the grid. For example, in areas of the Midwestern United States that use the Public Land Survey System, the northernmost and westernmost sections of a township deviate from what would otherwise be an exact square mile. The resulting discontinuities are sometimes reflected directly in local roads, which have kinks where the grid cannot follow completely straight lines. This distortion also affects how aerial photographs taken over large areas can be stitched together.