Before you ask, no I didn’t have any encounters with people who claimed Earth was flat. I’m just curious.
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It was conclusively proven when Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition (minus Ferdinand) circumnavigated the globe in 1522.
However, it had been widely believed in the west for nearly 2000 years before that. Greek cartographers had already noted that the sun is at a steeper angle in Egypt than it is in Macedonia, and used that angle to calculate the size of the sphere with good accuracy.
Early astronomers also suspected that lunar eclipses were caused by Earth’s shadow, which is visibly round.
Contrary to popular belief, Columbus wasn’t warned he’d fall off the world – his sponsors were (correctly) worried that he had miscalculated the distance from Spain to China and would never make it. He wouldn’t have, but was saved by a previously unknown landmass that allowed a resupply.
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