(Image credit: CalimaX / Alamy) (opens in new tab) This flat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893 is also considered the Bible Map of the World. We're an organization of Flat Earth theorists that long predates most of the FEIC newcomers to the scene.') (The Flat Earth Society responded to this by telling CNN, 'We are not a government-controlled body. But some believers want nothing to do with the Flat Earth Society, according to a 2019 CNN article (opens in new tab), with some attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas that year telling the news agency that the organization is a government-sponsored front designed to make Flat Earthers look bad. Today, the society claims more than 500 members (opens in new tab) on its roster. According to Smithsonian Magazine (opens in new tab), membership in the Flat Earth Society, founded in 1956, once reached 3,500 people.

No one knows how many flat Earth believers are out there. Opinions differ on exactly how the flat Earth works, with believers concocting elaborate versions of physics and creative interpretations of the solar system to make their theories work. These believers claim that the Earth is a flat disc, and that evidence that it is round - say, pictures taken from space - are an elaborate hoax involving multiple governments.

But a fringe society founded in the 1950s, dedicated to insisting that the Earth is flat, has given rise to a modern ground of flat Earth adherents.

Flat earth map