COLUMBUS
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Take the apocryphal story of Columbus and the egg. When his friends taunted
him, saying that discovering America was really easy since only had to point
west and keep going, he asked them to stand an egg on end. They tried but
failed. Then Columbus took the egg, flattened one end and stood it up.
Naturally his friends protested that they had thought the egg could not be
damaged. His friends had assumed for the egg problem limits which did not in
fact exist. But they had also assumed that it would not be possible to point
west and keep on sailing. This feat of navigation seemed easy only after
Columbus had shown that their assumptions were imaginary.