The Earth is flat? What planet is he on?

The Flat Earth Society has become a byword for sticking your head in the sand, whatever the scientific facts. David Adam tries to make sense of its new president, Daniel Shenton

A 1922 illustration from the Swedish and Norwegian magazine Allers Familj-Journal. Photograph: Alamy

Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you'd ­imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and ­global warming a myth. He should ­argue that smoking does not cause ­cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.

Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn't an early April fool.

In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, ­originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

If you thought that flat Earthism was gone, think again. The scientific evidence is stacked against Shenton, ­obviously, just as it is against those who think global warming is a hoax and that the dead stalk the Earth as ghosts – but that doesn't appear to trouble him in the least.

"There is no unified flat Earth model," Shenton suggests, "but the most commonly accepted one is that it's more or less a disc, with a ring of something to hold in the water. The height and substance of that, no one is absolutely sure, but most people think it's mountains with snow and ice."

The Earth is flat, he argues, because it appears flat. The sun and moon are spherical, but much smaller than mainstream science says, and they rotate around a plane of the Earth, because they appear to do so.

Inevitably, Shenton's ­argument forces him down all kinds of logical blind alleys – the non-existence of gravity, and his argument that most space exploration, and so the moon landings, are faked. But, while many flat Earthers have problems with the idea of orbiting satellites, ­Shenton navigates the ­London streets using GPS. He was also happy to fly from the US to Britain, but says an aircraft that flew over the Antarctic ­barrier would drop from the sky, and from the planet.

The Flat Earth Society was originally formed as the Universal Zetetic Society in 1884, after the Greek word zeteo, "to seek". Zeteticism, Shenton says, ­emphasises experience and reason over the ­"trusting acceptance of dogma" – or, it seems, overwhelming evidence. Only a personal trip into space to see the world as it is for himself would ­persuade him. "But even then, in seeing it, I would have to be convinced there weren't any tricks involved."

The International Flat Earth Society was formally founded in 1956. Shenton resurrected the society and claimed its presidency last year, ­following years of inaction after the death of former ­president Charles Johnson in 2001, who had some 3,000 registered followers. He has so far recruited 60 members through the society's website, which boasts about 9,000 visitors to its discussion forums.

"I can't say what everybody's motive is for joining, but there are quite a few who I know are as serious as I am," he says. "Lots of people log on once to hurl abuse but they tend to get bored and go away. We're not ­fanatical about it and we're not going to engage in pointless, ­angry discussions."

The website features scanned issues of the society's newsletter, the notorious Flat Earth News, from its 1970s and 80s heyday. Sample headlines include: Sun Is a Light 32 Miles Across, Australia Not Down Under, and World Is Flat and That's That.

"I thought it was a shame that all these documents would go unseen ­forever," Shenton says. But what about the evidence? In an age where ­astronauts send photographs of a spherical planet from an orbiting space station, how can the concept of a flat Earth persist?

"Look at what special effects are capable of: you can produce any photograph, any video. I don't think there is solid proof. I'm not intentionally being stubborn about it, but I feel our senses tell us these things, and it would take an extraordinarily level of evidence to counteract those. How many people have actually investigated it? Have you?"

Last year, Shenton did just that, travelling to a six-mile stretch of straight water along the Old Bedford River in Norfolk, the scene of many infamous flat Earth experiments. "There should have been curvature, but I didn't see what mainstream science says should have been there," he says.

Shenton's critics, it should be pointed out, can fall back on spherical trigonometry and astronomical ­observations that date right back to Aristotle in 330BC. In fact, the idea of a flat Earth was widespread only until about the fourth century BC, when the Ancient Greeks first proposed it was a sphere. By the Middle Ages, most ­people in Europe were convinced, ­contrary to popular stories. "A lot of the stuff about Columbus isn't true; there weren't mutinies about whether they would fall off the Earth," Shenton says.

The modern Flat Earth movement dates back to Victorian England, and biblical literalist Samuel Rowbotham and his followers, who promoted their cause by engaging top scientists of the day in public debate.

Shenton himself used to accept that the Earth was round, but began ­asking questions after hearing musician Thomas Dolby's 1984 album The Flat Earth. (When Shenton reconvened the society last year, Dolby accepted membership number 00001.) "It was the late 1990s and I started doing research into what the Flat Earth Society was. I had heard of it and, when I did some more research, I eventually ended up believing its ideas were true."

It may sound like Shenton is playing games, that the reborn society is a clever metaphor or marketing tool for another cause – but he insists he is serious.

"I haven't taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is ­incumbent on others to prove ­decisively that it isn't. And I don't think that burden of proof has been met yet."

The goat woman: Chinese grandmother, 101, grows mystery horn on forehead

9 March 2010

An elderly Chinese woman has stunned her family and fellow villagers by growing from her forehead a horn than resembles a goat’s.

Grandmother Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Linlou village, Henan province, began developing the mysterious protrusion last year.

Since then it has grown 2.4in in length and another now appears to emerging on the other side of the mother of seven’s forehead.

Bizarre: Zhang Ruifang began growing a horn last year. It is now 2.4in long

The condition has left her family baffled and worried.

Her youngest of six sons, Zhang Guozheng, 60, said when a patch of rough skin formed on her forehead last year ‘we didn't pay too much attention to it’.

‘But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,' added Mr Zhang, whose eldest brother and sibling is 82 years old.

‘Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead. It’s quite possible that it’s another horn.’

Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang’s head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.

This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.

Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.

They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.

The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.

Common underlying causes of cutaneous horns are common warts, skin cancer and actinic keratoses, patches of scaly skin that develop on skin exposed to the sun, such as your face, scalp or forearms.

Cutaneous horns can be removed surgically but this does not treat the underlying cause.

Boy dies after being hit by falling lamp-post

One-year-old's buggy was being pushed down street in west London when tragedy happened

• Press Association
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 February 2010 10.15 GMT
• Article history

A one-year-old boy who was hit by a falling lamp-post in west London on Tuesday has died today.

The baby, whose name has not been released, was struck when the lamp-post fell in Chiswick.

A 62-year-old woman, who suffered a back injury in the accident, was taken to hospital. She was discharged yesterday.

The boy was airlifted to the Royal London hospital, in east London. He was pronounced dead at about 5.30am.

"A baby boy seriously injured by a falling lamp-post in Chiswick has sadly died," a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

"A postmortem examination will be scheduled in due course."

The woman, who was treated at Charing Cross hospital, in west London, was not related to the baby and was not pushing his buggy when the lamp-post fell.

A police spokesman said the baby was with a carer, who was not injured.

The incident, which happened at the junction of Heathfield Terrace and Sutton Court Road, is being investigated by officers from Hounslow CID and the specialist crime directorate, along with the Health and Safety Executive.

A Hounslow council spokeswoman said the incident was "an awful tragedy" and the council was co-operating fully with the investigations.

She said work was being carried out in the area as part of the Turnham Green traffic and transport improvement scheme, designed to provide faster journeys for bus passengers.

Pet dog took home a human head

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2010/02/19

POLICE in King William’s Town have called on anyone missing a male relative to help identify a head found in a village about 10km outside the town.

The head was found by a dog, and dragged to its owner’s house.

A Ndevana resident said she got the shock of her life on Sunday when her dog arrived at her home carrying the grisly find.

The resident immediately alerted the police.

Police spokesperson Captain Thozama Solani said the head was badly decomposed, but still had flesh on it.

“It has been kept at a State mortuary in Bhisho.”

Solani said there were no reports of missing people in the area and police were baffled as to where the dog found the head.

A forensic team has been trying to determine what happened to the body.

She said at this stage police were not sure if the body had been buried or not.

Families with missing relatives are asked to go to the Bhisho mortuary and identify the head. — Msindisi Fengu