The Great Moon Hoax
During the last week of August 1835, the New York Sun, an American newspaper, serialised an article on its front page, which it claimed had first been published in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The article started as follows:
[W]e have the happiness of making known to the British public, and hence to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in Astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time.
These recent discoveries were nothing as mundane as a new planet or star. Rather, the article began by describing the how Sir John Herschel, the eminent English mathematician and astronomer, had developed a new telescope by means of which he was able to see things as clearly in space as it is possible to see them on Earth. Lots of technical detail followed about its construction and deployment, and then came the bombshell: The Moon is teaming with life.
Not just vegetation, though there is plenty of that, including forests, dark red flowers, lichen, and the like. But also many species of animals and birds: bison; mountain-top unicorns; pelicans; white stags; miniature zebra; hut-dwelling, bipedal beavers; and the most spectacular discovery of all, a race of furry, winged men:
We counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine, and fifteen in each, walking erect towards a small wood…They were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared, and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified…They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs.
The New York Sun went on to reveal that Vespertilio-homo, as Herschel had named these creatures, were rational, good tempered, able to engage in conversation, and were capable of producing works of art. Unfortunately, further revelations about the moon and its inhabitants were ruled out after Herschel’s telescope suffered a sudden and terminal breakdown (after it was pointed towards the Sun).
All this was of course an elaborate hoax. It is generally accepted that it was the work of Richard Adams Locke, a reporter working for the Sun at the time, who had been educated at Cambridge University. However, perhaps not surprisingly, it seems that many people were taken in by the story. The Sun’s circulation increased rapidly from about 15,000 people on the morning of the first article to 19,000 on the day that the winged-men were announced (though it should be said that there is some dispute about this).
A journalist later reported that
Yale College was alive with staunch supporters. The literati…looked daily for the arrival of the New York mail with unexampled avidity and implicit faith. It was the absorbing topic of the day. Nobody expressed or entertained a doubt as to the truth of the story. (Cited at the Museum of Hoaxes)
Edgar Allen Poe, it is said, stopped working on a follow-up to his The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall because he felt he could not match Herschel’s moon discoveries. And a missionary society from Springfield, Massachusetts decided to send a group of missionaries to the moon in order to bring Christianity and civilisation to the Vespertilio.
However, not everybody was so credulous. The New York Commercial Advertiser, for example, said of the hoax that it was ‘well done’, but that it was simply unbelievable that such a telescope could have been constructed, especially without anybody noticing or passing comment on it. And the New York Herald openly accused Locke as being the author of the hoax. The New York Sun, for its part, never publicly admitted that the story was false, saying only that it would have to check with English and Scottish newspapers before coming to that conclusion. Nevertheless, the whole event has gone down in history as the first, and perhaps greatest, American journalistic hoax.
Sir John Herschel, when he first heard of the story, was amused, declaring that his own observations were never that exciting. However, he eventually became irritated by the whole affair. It seems that people who continued to take the story seriously never stopped asking him about it.