13. The Hollow Earth Craze
The Hollow Earth craze was kicked off by a charlatan named John Cleves Symmes, Jr. A veteran of the War of 1812, Symmes moved to the frontier, where he reinvented himself as a scientist and became known as the “Newton of the West”. In 1818 he published Symmes Circular No. 1: “I declare the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking”.
Each concentric circle supposedly contained a subterranean world, and all of them were heated and illuminated by a sun-like object at the center of the planet. Symmes then hit the lecture circuit and lobbied the government for an expedition to the poles, where he claimed the entrances to the hollow earth’s interior were located. Educated people laughed off the idea, but it was taken seriously enough by many, and John Quincy Adams lent his support to the proposed Symmes expedition. Indeed, he promised to do just that in his successful 1824 presidential campaign.
