It was. Nobody educated thought the Earth was flat. But Christopher Columbus miscalculated the size of the Earth, and everyone else correctly calculated it.

It was. Nobody educated thought the Earth was flat. But Christopher Columbus miscalculated the size of the Earth, and everyone else correctly calculated it. There was no way that Columbus's ships could cover a distance equal to the width of the Atlantic + the width of the Pacific + the width of North America. They would've all starved to death before they reached their actual goal: the islands east of Asia (or Asia proper). It wasn't a calculated risk to find new land, they were trying to go to existing land and Columbus was just convinced that it was much, much, much closer than it actually was. Despite the fact that pretty close estimates of the size of the world had been calculated for a long time before him.