The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
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Long before Fox News, and an increasing number of media outlets, there was the New York Sun. In 1935 they published a series of articles about life on the Moon.
On August 25, 1935 they published the first of six articles with this lead in:
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 Sun reported that, thanks to a new powerful telescope, Sir John saw there were all kinds of interesting creatures on the moon, unicorns, beavers, human-like beings with bat-like wings and even goats.
Though Sir John Herschel was a well-known astronomer, and his travels to South America a year prior had been widely reported, he made no such discoveries while he was there. There was no incredible new telescope and there were no lunar forests or temples or bat-people. There wasn’t even an Edinburgh Journal of Science at that point. It was all a hoax.
Despite being outed as a hoax a few weeks after publication, the Sun never did retract their story. But then again, it didn’t have too long (by newspaper standards) to prove how trustworthy they were: they ceased publication in 1850. If today’s media ceased to exist because of reporting false stories, there wouldn’t be many of them left.
Illustration from New York Sun in 1835
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Ahh! A goat person! Now Joe…I can arrange an introduction to a lonely goat I happen to know…;-)
Ah for the good old days when “news” outlets made up stuff about bat people and moon goats. Now they would be liberal pinko commie bat people and goats.
OI! Krell! Get outta my dream!..;-)
Palm trees and winged females?? I had a dream like that once..
The Sun??? Good grief!!! I wondered where Britains Sun Newspaper originated!….Mind you…they didn’t have ‘Page Three topless girls’ back then…
The Daily Sport aka ‘let’s publish a soft porn magazine disguised as a newspaper’ once reported on April 1st that a London double decker bus had been disovered on the moon.
To this day there are peeps who believe that to be the gospel truth.
Trust me, I (sadly) know two of them.
REM knew their stuff!!!!