Great Moon Hoax
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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 articles were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, perhaps the best-known astronomer of his day.
The headline read:
LATELY MADE
BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c.
At the Cape of Good Hope
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
References
- Evans, David S. "The Great Moon Hoax," Sky & Telescope, 196 (September 1981) and 308 (October 1981).
See also
he:תרמית הירח הגדולה
