**Know Few Things About Earth.
1. Who was the first to discover that Earth is not flat but a sphere (round)
People earlier believe that Earth was flat. But they were confused as no explorer had seen the edge of Earth. They could not explain the logic behind the following facts:
* Where do the tides of the sea go when they reach the end of the earth?
* Why don’t the ships fall when they reach the edge?
It was Plato who first suggested that Earth could be a sphere and not flat. He said there was no end but a round circumference that was continuous.
It was a Portuguese explorer named Ferdinand Magellan who proved that Earth was round. In 1519, he took a voyage which lasted for 3 years and went all round the Earth (circumnavigate) to prove that Earth was round and not flat!
2. But, We thoughts that the Earth is a perfect sphere ?
Think again. The glaciers at the North and the South Poles are very heavy and put extreme pressure on the land beneath them. The Antarctic ice cap is so heavy that is compresses the earth slightly at the South Pole, making it slightly pear shaped. It was Sir lsaac Newton who first proposed that Earth was not perfectly round. He suggested that it is little squashed at its poles and swollen at the equator.
3. Who discovered that Earth is not at the center of the Universe ?
For centuries it was believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. In 1543, a man named Copernicus published a book asking ‘What if the Earth was a planet circling the Sun?’ He didn’t actually prove but claimed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe, and that many planets revolved around the sun. His book was banned by the Church. Later, an astronomer Galileo Galilie proved Copernics’ theory. He looked at the universe through his first telescope and found.
He discovered that four moons circled around Jupiter which meant that everything did not revolve around Earth, as believed earlier.
He also observed that Venus went in phases just like Moon which proved that it didn’t orbit around Earth but around Sun.
His discoveries were questioned by Church and he was imprisoned for telling lies!
