Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[blauboad]

OT Sgolds--

Both Columbus and his crew were in agreement that world is round, but the crew did not understand that gravity pulls toward the center of the Earth, and thus feared that at a certain point, the downward gradient would become increasingly steep until they all simply fell off.

Interestingly, in Dante's Inferno (a bit after year 1300), the idea that gravity pulls things toward the Earth's center is clearly understood and illustrated. Upon descending to the center of the Earth and seeing Satan who inhabits it, Dante climbs uphis legs to begin his ascent to the side of the world opposite from where he started.

And Columbus's calculation of the Earth's circumference--based upon classical sources and Columbus' own theories--underestimated the size of the Earth by so much that Asia would have been exactly where Columbus found America--which, of course, was exactly what he was looking for.