M.G.M. announced it would produce "The Flat Earth," made by the same hands who turned out "The Good Earth." Warner Brothers promptly purchased a vehicle called "One Globe" to star Humphrey Bogart as Columbus, Lauren Bacall as Queen Isabella, and Paul Muni as the Santa Maria.
The controversy spilled over into the United Nations. Russia, which discovered that it looked more imposing on flat maps, demanded that all globe maps be destroyed under a death penalty for non-compliance. The United States, out of habit, opposed this idea. Despite $3,567,219,483,128.50 rushed as a loan to Albania, Iceland and 72 other nations, the U.N. vote went with the Soviet. As one Albanian grumbled, "They didn't send Chesterfields—just Wings."
Russia's victory had reverberations heard around the world ... or rather, along the sides of the world. Old geographies were burned. Globe maps were broken in half and used for ashtrays. The flat map won the international distinction of being referred to as the Moscow map. Globetrotters were laid off by the lecture bureaus in droves. Universal Pictures had the plane in its trademark sky-write the company's name around a terrestrial saucer.
The world could not exist half round, half flat, the President of the United States told Congress sadly. And since the rest of the world was flat, there was no help for it—America would have to flatten out, too. Despite globephobe cries of "Shame!" the famous 22nd Amendment was added to the Constitution:—
"The world shall, for all purposes of this Republic, be considered as flat. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Any article or any amendment which may contain any implication that the world is round is hereby nullified and repealed."
Now that the world is once more flat, unified and serene, I do not think that there can be any serious consequences if I reveal the sequel to this historic development. It came about when the editor of a national magazine, at his wit's end for a strong piece to follow his usual lead article of "Is Sex Here To Stay" or "How Sexy Are You Sexually?", hit upon the notion of sending me to Australia to find the man who had discovered the earth was flat.
It took me months of searching through the outback to locate Herbert Fitzgrone. He was still living in his bush shanty, and had just turned eighty when I found him. I had great difficulty in persuading him to tell me the whole story, as he was totally absorbed in a new scientific study. He was on the verge, he told me jubilantly, of proving that there is no such thing as gravity, and that Newton was an ass.
When I persisted in knowing more about his original research that had exploded the globular theory, he smiled dryly.
"Oh, that! Well, you probably know that I left all my calculations behind in that editor's office. When I came back here, I decided to work out a duplicate set. Well, sir, do you know what I discovered? That old Columbus had been right all along! I'd put the decimal point for the algebraic equation of one plane triangle in the wrong place."