Missed the edit…
I thought he went kamikaze on Ancalagaon.
But I agree with the point being made.
No, AFAIK he just killed the dragon, didn’t die himself:
But Earendil came, shining with white flame, and about Vingilot were gathered all the great birds of heaven and Thorondor was their captain, and there was battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt. Before the rising of the sun Earendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin.
But if we’re on a flat earth, for the stars to change as you go eastward, the stars would have to be something like a couple of hundred miles (or so) upward. If they were at stellar distances on a flat earth, there’d be little change as you traveled. The only reason you get different constellations in the southern hemisphere on Earth is from traveling to a visual plane that’s not available from a different latitude. On a flat disk, all stars are visible always, but (depending on distance) they might be closer or further.
That said, the ship guy with a shiny rock is a very good point. Things are weird here.
Interesting. I thought the three Silmarils were lost to the world until the Last Battle.
But, it seems, everyone knows where one is.
Did the Valar make Middle Earth a globe at the end of the first age or the second age? (another thing I forget)
They may know, but they can’t get to it, so it’s outside the world.
Neither. In the Second Age, but not at the end of it (I know, right? You’d think that would be an Age-ending event for sure). The Second Age ends with the Last Alliance and the defeat of Sauron.
And it’s Valar, plural.
And it wasn’t them, anyway, it was Eru Ilúvatar himself who changed the world.
Stars in Middle-Earth aren’t even meant to be suns like our own, trillions of miles away - they’re points of divine light that were placed above Arda by the Valar at the dawn of time. They’re potentially much closer to Arda than the stars are in our world, so I see no reason they can’t get as strange as they want in any direction they fancy.
End(ish) of the second age. Numenor assailed/landed on Valinor, the Valar sayeth “WTF dude, Illuvatar, halp! halp!”. Illuvatar/The One sinks Numenor, bends the planet to be spherical.
Wasn’t there a reference in - I think? - The Hobbit to Bilbo seeing The Plough, our Big Dipper?
I recall a footnote that stated it was our constellation.
There may have been. I haven’t read The Hobbit in a long time. Of course, The Hobbit was originally a standalone that wasn’t meant to be connected to the broader Legendarium, and before Tolkien revised it when LOTR was published, the Shire had a locomotive and Bilbo mentioned perhaps travelling to China one day, so I’m not sure how much weight those kind of minor mentions ought to be given.
The sickle of the Valar would likely be the Plough or Big Dipper. Orion is mentioned as Menelvagor teh swordsman.
So there are some linkages
One was cast into the ocean, one was dropped into a volcano, and one is now the Evening Star.
“They are scattered to the earth, the sea, and the sky, and shall not be together again until the world is unmade.”
“Telumechtar with his shining belt.”
"Temba, his arms wide.”
How did Adar escape from the barn just before the lava bombs started falling? Did he just manage to get loose from his restraints? I can’t imagine Halbrand/Sauron let him go.
It didn’t corrupt Gandalf, Galadriel, Faramir or Sam.
Sauron cultists, of course, as we later learned… but weren’t they overlooking the stream in Valinor where the young Galadriel made her toy boat, in E1? Or am I misremembering?
Yeah, my son and I both noticed that the Harfoots paid lip service to sticking together no matter what, but then left Nori’s family to fend for themselves. If they hadn’t had the Stranger with them, they probably would’ve died.
C’mon. He pooped at the same time as we did - during the ad breaks.
You have to know these things when you’re King of the Southlands, you know.
Very cool - thanks! I’d missed that.
Either or. I assumed he just got free, you never leave someone like that alive and unsupervised by someone who can effectively contain him.
But, you brought up a good point, it’s entirely possible that Sauron let him go, to let him build up his orc army for Sauron to take over when he returned.
For the first three, it would have if they had actually possessed it. For the latter, that’s why the Hobbits were used, they have simple ambitions. Sam’s greatest ambition was a nice garden, so it couldn’t pry into him.
No, you are misremembering. I think you’re recalling a jumpcut in of one of the trailers for the series. But that’s a jump from the scene in Galadriel’s youth, to the Easterners coming to overlook the Stranger’s landing spot
But Atamasama wrote that “the One Ring… corrupted everyone it came in contact with over time…” (not a word about actual possession), and that’s just not so.
Thanks, yes, that’s probably it.
This is tangential, but Daniel Weyman, aka The Stranger, just showed up on a Midsomer Murders we were watching as a mystically-fixated man who runs around in a heavy robe mumbling anxiously to himself. So, he had some practice for RoP. 
Although the ring did its best to tempt him. Given more time he might have succumbed:
Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad Dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.