the Suez Canal 'no locks = no curve' argument is older than you think — it's from 1885

Saw this one go viral AGAIN last week ('Suez is 100 miles, no locks, where's the 6,000ft drop??') and people act like it's some fresh gotcha. It is not. Tracked the original. It's from William Carpenter, 'One Hundred Proofs That The Earth Is Not A Globe,' 1885. He literally wrote the canal 'forms a……