Case file · Folklore / legend
Symmes's hollow-earth circular
In April 1818, from St. Louis, former army officer John Cleves Symmes Jr. sent out his 'Circular No. 1' declaring the Earth hollow with openings at the poles, and asked for 'a hundred brave companions' to sail into it.
1818 CE · 38.63, -90.20 · status: claim
The account
He lectured widely in Ohio and Kentucky; his ideas helped inspire the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 and a long line of hollow-earth fiction and conspiracy belief.
The sceptical view
Seismology and gravity measurements show the Earth is solid with a dense core.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'hole at the North Pole' satellite photo
- The US Exploring Expedition, born of Symmes's hole
- Halley's hollow Earth
- 'The Smoky God': a voyage into the inner Earth
- Poe's 'Arthur Gordon Pym' and the white figure at the pole
- The Shaver Mystery: deros in the caves
- Agartha, the kingdom inside the Earth
- Byrd's 'land beyond the pole' quotes, claimed and documented
- Raymond Bernard's 'The Hollow Earth' and the Byrd myth