The Great Moon Hoax was a series of six articles that appeared in the New York Sun beginning on August 25, 1835 about the supposed discovery of life on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, perhaps the best-known astronomer of his day.
The headline read:
GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES
LATELY MADE BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c. At the Cape of Good Hope
[From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science]
The articles were written by Richard Adams Locke (1800–1871); the Edinburgh Journal of Science was a real scientific journal which had however ceased publication some years earlier. Locke later stated that his intention was satire rather than a hoax, to poke fun at scientists and what he considered their wild speculations.
The articles described fantastic animals on the Moon, including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tailless beavers and batlike winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples. There were trees and oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle".
For a time the Sun's circulation skyrocketed, and remained permanently higher than before. In a way, the hoax "made" the paper, which had only begun publishing a few years earlier.
Herschel was initially amused at the hoax, noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. This later turned to annoyance when he had to field questions from people who had taken the hoax seriously.
External links
The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (http://www.historybuff.com/library/refmoon.html)
There are two "Moonhoaxes." The first, sometimes referred to as the "GreatMoonHoax," was perpetrated in 1835 by Richard Adams Locke, a writer hired by the newly established New York Sun.
The fact that the "MoonHoax" was almost certainly nothing of the kind has been argued compellingly by Michael Crowe who cites an account of the affair written by William Griggs in 1852.
The second "Moonhoax" is the more modern claim that the Apollo missions never landed on the Moon.
When the discovery of men on the moon appeared Day was able to announce that the Sun possessed the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world: 19,360.
Later stories told of the Temple of the Moon, constructed of sapphire, with a roof of yellow resembling gold.
When the hoax was exposed people were generally amused.
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