Flat Earth
<p> "One of Irving's most lasting contributions to American culture is in the way Americans perceive and celebrate Christmas. In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, Irving inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon—a creation others would later dress up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor, that depicted harmonious warm-hearted English Christmas festivities he experienced while staying in Aston Hall, Birmingham, England, that had largely been abandoned.[106] He used text from The Vindication of Christmas (London 1652) of old English Christmas traditions, he had transcribed into his journal as a format for his stories.[107] The book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.[108]
John Quidor's painting The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, inspired by Washington Irving's work.
In his biography of Christopher Columbus,[109]<b> Irving introduced the erroneous idea that Europeans believed the world to be flat prior to the discovery of the New World.[110] Borrowed from Irving, the flat-Earth myth has been taught in schools as fact to many generations of Americans</b>.[111][112]"
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving</a></p>
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"Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-Earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over biological evolution. Russell claims "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat", and ascribes popularization of the flat-Earth myth to histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving.[6][7][2]"</p>
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"Oh, you believe in flat earth? Let me guess. You believe in Santa Claus, too?"
~Jan Irvin on the fictional creations of Washington Irving </p>