Flat Earth City

Wilbur Glenn Voliva was a self-proclaimed prophet, flat-earth crusader, and autocratic ruler of Zion, Illinois. This fiery preacher took over John Alexander Dowie’s religious utopia in the early 1900s, ruling with an iron fist, Volivabanning everything from whistling to reading newspapers on Sundays. But his most infamous crusade was against science itself: Voliva loudly declared that the Earth was flat, even offering thousands of dollars to anyone who could prove it was round.