“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” in an effort to prove to European naysayers that the world was round, right? Not at all. In fact, Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (his real name), his European contemporaries, and basically all educated humans dating back to the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere. Famous mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (of a2 + b2 = c2 fame) figured out as much around 500 BCE, and 260 years later, another Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes accurately measured the Earth’s circumference. But defying the status quo and risking a deathly plunge into the vacuum of space certainly adds some dramatic tension, which is probably why Washington Irving invented this fictional flourishfor his 1828 biography The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Although he was known for his inventive works of fiction, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving’s creative history of Colombo became one of the most persistent myths of the Age of Exploration.