Legally Pi

A little Pi Day story from the wonderful mentalfloss.com:

"The notion of legislatively changing a mathematical constant sounds crazy. But in 1897, Indiana's legislators tried to pass a bill that legally defined the value of pi as 3.2. It all started with Edward J. Goodwin, a Solitude, Indiana, physician who spent his free time dabbling in mathematics and an old problem known as squaring the circle -- the theory that a compass and a straight edge could be used to construct a square that had the exact same area as a circle. Then all one would need to do to find the area of the circle was calculate the area of the square.

"Sounds like a neat trick -- but it's impossible. Still, Goodwin wasn't going to let something trivial like a proven mathematical impossibility deter him. He persevered,
and in 1894, he convinced American Mathematical Monthly to print the proof in which he "solved" the squaring-the-circle problem. One of the odd side effects of Goodwin's machinations was that the value of pi morphed into 3.2.

"Goodwin copyrighted his faulty method to collect royalties. But he offered to let Indiana use his masterpiece free of charge -- if the state adopted this "new mathematical truth" as state law. House Bill 246 was introduced, and it was eventually passed unanimously. But by the time the bill hit the Senate, it had become national news, and a Purdue University professor decided to intervene. He explained to a group of senators why Goodwin's theory was nonsense, and the bill died a quiet legislative death."