A rounded historical past of Flat-Earthers: How mad concept popularised within the Victorian period has been parroted by celebrities together with Freddie Flintoff

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

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

They were propounding a theory that really kicked off in the Victorian era, when Biblical Creationist Samuel Birley Rowbotham carried out a test called the Bedford Level Experiment in 1838. 

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

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

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

The internet era has brought a new army of ‘believers’, one of whom hinted this week that he has concluded the Earth might be round after all.

Jeran Campanella, who runs the popular Flat Earth YouTube show ‘Jeransim’, travelled to Antarctica and witnessed first hand that the sun doesn’t set during the southern hemisphere’s summer.

He tells viewers in a new video: ‘Sometimes you are wrong in life and I thought there was no 24-hour sun. In fact I was pretty sure of it.

‘And it’s a fact – the sun does circle you in the south. So what does that mean? You guys are going to have to find that out for yourself.’

Campanella thanked the organiser of the trip, which cost $35,000 (£27,500) – although he stopped short of saying that the Earth is spherical.

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

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

The Ancient Greeks first discovered that the Earth is not flat in at least 200BC. 

Solid mathematical proof was delivered by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543.

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

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

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

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

When it was repeated, Russel Wallace was able to show that there was a degree of curvature. 

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

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

But it was ruled that the bet had been invalid because Hampden had retracted the wager, so Wallace had to return the money. 

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

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

Blount’s society published a journal using the same title and attracted members including an archbishop and various aristocrats and literary figures.

In 1956, the group became the International Flat Earth Society. 

Its main organiser, Mr Shenton, dismissed NASA’s photographic evidence of our spherical planet, by saying: ‘It’s easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye.’ 

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

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

Johnson told Newsweek in 1984: ‘If Earth were a ball spinning in space, there would be no up or down.’

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

The Flat-Earth Society was resurrected as an online discussion forum in 2004 and the group was officially re-launched in 2009. 

Serious Flat-Earthers believe that Nasa faked its pictures of the planet from space.

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

He asked: ‘If you’re in a helicopter and you hover, why does the Earth not [rotate under you] if it’s round?’ 

The former cricketer added: ‘Why would water stay still if we’re hurtling through space? Why is it not wobbling?’

Months earlier, Shaquille O’Neal had said: ‘I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me,’ he declared. 

‘I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity.’ 

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

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

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