Saturday, September 09, 2006

The Hollow Earth, 1904


1904 saw the emergence of the book The Hollow Earth, by Franklin Titus Ives, who died in 1910. Ives' fame predominantly rests on his Yankee Jumbles: or Chimney Corner Tales of the Nineteenth Cen­tury, published in 1903 and which consists of his reminiscences of Connecticut in the early nineteenth century. Writes Ives "...for whom I wish to speak a word of commendation and admiration is Captain John Cleves Symmes, who I am prepared to allow the honor of first advancing the theory that the Earth is hollow, and has been held up as the authority for finding "Symmes Hole". While the present writer had never seen or read any of his arguments for such a hole, the idea came originally, as if never thought of by my worthy predecessor..."

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