During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fashionable women wouldn’t consider travelling without a black velvet mask, called a vizard, to protect their complexion from the sun, from the dust kicked up by horses, and from gritty, polluted city air. Such… Read More
In the third century BC, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth as 24,700 miles. (It’s actually 24,900 miles). But no one listened to him. For 1500 years, everyone believed Claudius Ptolemy’s calculation, which was 17,800 miles. That’s the number Columbus used when he miscalculated where India was.