Golden Age wrote:"...history says the globe Earth was proven by a lad who stuck sticks in the ground 500 years ago and then proclaimed that due to the angle of the shadows we must be on a spinning ball...We need science to have another look at this."

Thinking of Eratosthenes? The Greek who 2200 years ago measured the circumference of Earth in Egypt in a simple experiment, i.e. he got the distance between two points, then measured shadows of 2 identical vertical sticks at each end point at the same time. Then it's simple geometry. Others gave done this experiment. My daughter, for one, replicated it for a science fair (winning the Earth Science division at the Colorado state science fair that year).  With unique units of measurement and her own homemade instruments, she spent three weeks triangulating the distance from Cheyenne to Denver and then compared the shadows of identical poles at noon in both cities. I recall she got the circumference to be about 22,900 miles (92% accuracy).