Today, of all days:

Eric Schmitt @Eric_Schmitt
In 1492 the “consensus” among scientists was that the earth was flat. Christopher Columbus challenged that notion and changed the world forever. #HappyColumbusDay
10:03 AM · Oct 11, 2021

What a dumbass.

Some of the responses:

OMG.

This tweet must never be forgotten.

This demonstrates such profound ignorance that everyone should be appalled you hold statewide office.

Where did you go to college? You need to demand your money back for keeping you so stupid.

Ummm…NOT according to historical experts.
“no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat.”

Get your facts straight, @Eric_Schmitt.
[…]

Next time, crack open a history book before you make a complete ass of yourself

This is what happens when you limit what can be taught in history classes.
Curvature of the earth has been known by sailors for 2000 plus years.
Critical Sailing Theories!! Lol

The scientific consensus that the world was round was agreed on in Ancient Greece, and understood before then.

What Columbus did was ignore the scientists who, within ~0.1%, accurately estimated how big the world is and declared the Caribbean to be India.

Just to clarify for anyone else reading (as I’m sure @trianglman knows) the Ancient Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene had figured out the circumference of the earth very nearly correctly using records from the library of Alexandria (where he was head librarian.)

This was roughly 2000 years before Columbus.

Eratosthenes was off because his math assumes that the earth was a sphere, when it’s actually somewhat squished at the poles.

(Columbus’s math was off because he was bad at math and too arrogant to listen to everyone else.)

Also: Columbus thought the earth was smaller than it is. Imagine how long of a boat voyage sailing from Spain to China would be if North America was just water? Yeah, you wouldn’t want to sail that. But he thought that the known circumference was wrong and went for it.

Actually scientists long before 1492 knew the world was not flat. Ships disappeared over the horizon. Where did you go to school again?

You could research things before you tweet.

come on. if he won’t do research before filing law suits why would he do it for a tweet?

Dude, Europeans knew the Earth was round since the time of the ancient Greeks. Not only that, but Columbus underestimated the distance between Spain and East Asia, and his voyage would have starved had they not discovered the Americas as their supplies ran out

In 1492 Eric would taking Columbus to court to maintain it was flat. Can’t have someone getting a shorter spice route to India

You know why Columbus got mocked? Because scholars of his day new for a fact that the world was much larger than he thought, and he risked starvation over his error.

Just stop it. Wherever you were educated has a lot of explaining to do.

Tell me you don’t know history without telling me you don’t know history.

Omg, read a book. The Egyptians knew the earth was round over 6,000 years ago. Columbus did not “discover” Earth’s shape, scientists did.

“And then Columbus said, ‘I cannot tell a lie, father, it was I who chopped down the cherry tree, to show thst the world was round!’ Whereupon the father wept and welcomed the prodigal son back to his family, and they lived happily ever after.”

The dinoosaurs made him do it.

Oooh It’s history myth story time. Let’s all gather on the story carpet. Now do Thanksgiving. How ’bout the story where a state AG sues a country over a virus?

You should support creating a “Neil Armstrong Day”, the guy discovered the moon, after all.

This is why teachers, not politicians, need to be in charge of curriculum

Seems there was a child left behind, Bush.

This man passed the bar? Real question. Surely, someone checked, right?

Have you ever met a culture warrior stance you don’t want to peddle?

No. This has been another edition of short answers to simple questions.

Do you get your history facts from Buggs Bunny cartoons?

Ignoranimus.

Did you take the bar exam with one of those really big pencils or a crayon?

Stay in school, kids

When you tweet these things, do you know they are wrong and rely on followers to not be smart enough to know, too? Or do you really not know? Either is bad. Do better.

How in the remedial coursework is this tweet still live?!

We all have the receipts.

Wow. Just wow with the inaccuracy.

This is honestly fucking embarrassing bro.

What’s truly offensive about this tweet is how stupid you think your supporters are. You pander so hard to folks you’ll never ever respect. You’re trash, bro.

Seriously? If Trump said the world was flat, you’d delete this tweet and sue all the school districts in MO for having globes in their classrooms. Have a shred of self respect.

Do you ever do any actual work??

This is hilarious. The tweet has been out there for 3.5 hours and still not deleted. Ignorance is strong with this one.

Man you really haven’t read any history have you… There was never a scientific majority that believed the earth was flat. It has only ever been the folksy imaginings of ignorant people.

Is this a parody account?

I will never understand why you think spouting off about things you clearly are ignorant about is a good look

Are you really this ignorant, or are you just assuming your followers are?

The level of ignorance expressed in this tweet has me question your sentience as a life form. Clearly your critical thinking skills are under developed for your current role. Could we substitute a potted plant for you so that we could have a productive AG?

There you go.

Previously:

Eric Schmitt (r) lays an egg (August 24, 2021)

The neighbor across the street (October 6, 2021)

Speaking of Fascists… (October 7, 2021)