Other sites and searches, 2026-10-10 (STEP I run 1): partial, negative and blocked

Old Bailey Online API (dhi.ac.uk)

Query: https://www.dhi.ac.uk/api/data/oldbailey_record?text=Hampden%20Wallace returned "Service Unavailable" (curl). Result: blocked (service down), not CAPTCHA. Recheck. Google query "John Hampden" libel Wallace "Old Bailey" OR "Central Criminal Court" 1871 "flat" found only WKU S248A (Wallace, "The Libel Case. Summary Punishment", 1875) and a TFES forum thread. Per the WKU and Epsilon records, the libel proceedings that are documented were heard at Stratford magistrates (1871), at the Chelmsford Spring Assizes (March 1875, The Times 8 March 1875) and in the 1872 London committal. The Old Bailey may not be the right court.

Natural History Museum archives (CalmView)

Google ("John Hampden" 1819-1891 flat earth obituary OR death Swindon Hertford) showed an NHM CalmView record: "Twenty Reasons against Newtonianism with Geographical Proofs that the earth is an extended plane. By Ebenezer Breach, natural astronomer ..." (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/CalmView/record.aspx?...; the record key was not captured). The NHM holds Wallace's papers [memory: high], so this is probably a flat-earth pamphlet in the Wallace collection. A scripted CalmView search (q=Hampden flat, q=Breach) returned a page with no record links. Result: partial. Recheck in Chrome: search CalmView for "Hampden", "Breach", "Bedford", "flat earth" in the Wallace (WP) collection.

BBC News, 18 April 2025 (Katy Prickett), "The Cambridgeshire Fens and the flat Earth conspiracy"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3rl97lqpo. curl saved the page, but only metadata was parsed: "A series of 19th Century experiments are the origins of today's flat Earth conspiracy, says an expert." It has a video (2 min 52 s) dated 2025-04-11. Result: partial (body not read).

Historic UK, "Bedford Level Experiment - Flat-Earthers in the Fens" (23 Mar 2026)

Google snippet only: "In January 1870, a challenge was issued: a man called John Hampden bet any scientist £500 ..." Not opened.

Chicago skyline across Lake Michigan (claim 1, Skiba's Chicago case)

Query: Chicago skyline seen from Michigan Grand Mere 2015 Nowicki photograph superior mirage looming refraction distance. Google results only, not opened: - ABC57, 29 April 2015: Joshua Nowicki's photograph of the Chicago skyline "taken almost 60 miles away" is called "actually a mirage". - KFVS12, 30 April 2015: taken from Warren Dunes State Park, Bridgman, Michigan, "roughly 50 miles" away. - Washington Post, 19 April 2017: Chicago "floating on Lake Michigan ... It was a fata morgana". - Visit Southwest Michigan: "if it is upright, that is a looming refraction". Bearing: these are the press characterizations (mirage or looming) of the same sightings that Skiba's 2016-17 videos treat as evidence against curvature. The photographer's own statements and the weather data (temperature inversion over the lake) are the records that bear on it. Result: partial.

Google searches with no new primary material

• "Universal Zetetic Society" records archive OR papers Blount "Earth Review" library holdings: only the IA copies of Earth Review, Plane Truth ch. 4, 5 and 7, and the TFES wiki. No institutional holding of the society's records was found. Negative for archives.
• "Flat or Spherical?" Blount magazine 1904 OR 1905 zetetic: led to the TFES library PDFs (see tfes-library note). Also noted: C. Garwood, Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea (2007), a PDF copy on a file host (not used; copyright).
• "Samuel Birley Rowbotham" 1884 death obituary "Dr. Birley" OR "Dr Birley" Brixton: Wikipedia (death 23 Dec 1884, London; "Dr. Birley's Syrup of Free Phosphorus") and WikiTree. No obituary found.
• "Rowbotham" "Parallax" lecture 1860s newspaper "Earth not a Globe" Bedford canal 1838 "Zetetic" archive.org: archive.org copies of the book; the Hewitson diaries (see the rowbotham-early-record note); Fortean Times, March 2016.