- Wikipedia is not consider a reliable source. It is created and edited by the average man, I could edit and say that Magellan was my uncle. History books have also been found to have errors because the people that wrote them were not actually there.
"Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, successfully led a fleet of ships continuously around the world in the early 1500s,
proving, finally, that the Earth was indeed round." < ---- this states in a roundabout way (roundabout
), that once an explorer sailed around the world, there was no longer a question that the world was in fact round. Ending any skepticism that it was not. Thus
proving the world was round not just
claiming that they believed it to be.
Was he the first to
claim the world was round, no but he was the first one to back up his claim with proof. Or at least he was according to the history books...
Who knows if someone else went before him, it is completely possible that a pirate (or maybe it was the Vikings) ship sailed around the world first thinking that they were lost, and ashamed that it took them so long to get home that they made up stories of fighting off dragons for buried treasures. We will never know and the good news is
it does not matter.