Voliva and Zion: Chronicling America (Library of Congress), TIME archive, New York Times archive, Internet Archive
Visit: 2026-10-10 (STEP I run 1).
Chronicling America (loc.gov)
Query: https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=voliva+flat+earth (Chrome) returned 257 page hits in full text. Scripted access (curl to loc.gov JSON and to chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/.../ocr.txt) was blocked by a Cloudflare challenge; Chrome worked. Top hits: Morning Tulsa Daily World 30 Oct 1921 p.8; St. Croix Avis 17 Sep 1934 p.3; Lambertville Record 13 Apr 1923 p.2; Daily Kennebec Journal 19 Oct 1921 p.11; New-York Tribune 12 Feb 1922 (already in the project folder); Washington Daily News 12 Oct 1942 p.3 (the month of Voliva's death); Evening Journal (Wilmington) 7 Mar 1922 p.18; Palatka Daily News 19 Oct 1921 p.4; St. Charles Herald 1 Apr 1922 p.5.
Read: Palatka Daily News, 19 Oct 1921, p.4 (Associated Press, datelined Zion, Ill., 18 Oct): https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn78001466/1921-10-19/ed-1/?sp=4&st=text [web] - The Zion schools, of which Voliva was president, "have adopted his new theories of a flat world and the absence of gravitation". The 1,000 grade and high school pupils are said to believe them; the state public school in Zion still teaches the globe. - The new course: "The earth is a flat circular world, with a north pole in the exact center, no south pole, and surrounded by a wall of ice" (OCR lightly corrected). - Bearing: claims 3 and 4 (no gravitation) and the history of when the doctrine entered the Zion curriculum: October 1921, AP wire, widely syndicated (the Oct 1921 cluster of hits).
TIME magazine archive
https://time.com/archive/6751249/religion-courageous-mr-voliva/ (12 June 1933) (curl) [web] - "the world is shaped like a soup-plate. In 1931 he proved this by taking a trip around the world's periphery". It cites TIME of 16 March 1931 for his claim to be "worth $10,000,000". In June 1933 he was "an involuntary bankrupt"; Zion industries were in receivership, with liabilities of $800,000 and assets of $2,000,000. - Bearing: historical record (decline of Zion). Voliva's 1931 world trip was presented as a test of the flat model.
New York Times archive (Google result only, not opened; paywall)
- "VOLIVA STILL INSISTS THE WORLD IS FLAT; Back From 3-Year Cruise ...", NYT 5 March 1931: https://www.nytimes.com/1931/03/05/archives/voliva-still-insists-the-world-is-flat-back-from-3year-cruise-sees.html [web: Google snippet: he "returned here yesterday after a trip around the world, still firm in" his belief]. This is the record of what Voliva said he observed on a circumnavigation, which bears directly on the flat-map claims. Lead for the next run.
Other leads from the same Google page (not opened)
- D. Noell, 2020, Columbia University thesis on radio regulation, which discusses Voliva and WCBD: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-k1g5-3736/download (Federal Radio Commission records on WCBD; priority 4).
- Wikipedia "Wilbur Glenn Voliva" (1870-1942).
- Internet Archive item "modern_mechanix_voliva_challenge" (a Modern Mechanix article on Voliva's $5,000 offer). Its djvu text returned HTTP 500; the PDF was not fetched.
- Schadewald (Plane Truth ch. 8): WCBD (5,000 W) started by 1922, and a standing $5,000 offer to anyone who could prove the globe to him, "nobody ever collected" [web].