A lithograph of the hoax's "ruby amphitheater", as printed in The Sun
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835" was a series of six articles published in The Sun (a New York newspaper), beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.[1]
The story was advertised on August 21, 1835, as an upcoming feature allegedly reprinted from The Edinburgh Courant.[2] The first in a series of six was published four days later on August 25. These articles were never retracted; however, on September 16, 1835, The Sun admitted the articles were in fact fabricated.[3]
Hoax
Portrait of a man-bat ("Vespertilio-homo"), from an edition of the Moon series published in Naples
[From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.]
The articles described animals on the Moon, including bison, single-horned goats, mini zebras, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples.[4] There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle". The telescope - transported to South Africa from New England - was said to be many times larger than any other telescope in the world. The lens measured "24 feet in diameter and 7 tons in weight".[4]
"Vespertilio-homo" can be translated from Latin as man-bat, bat-man, or man-bats.[5][6][7]
A reprinted edition of 1836 added a second type named the Vespertiliones.[8] The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the travelling companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel, but Grant was fictitious.
Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a "burning glass", setting fire to the observatory.[9]
Authorship
View of the Moon HoaxThe Inhabitants of the Moon, 1836, Welsh edition
The writer of the article was at first not known to the public. Authorship has subsequently been attributed to Richard Adams Locke (1800–1871),[10][11] a reporter who, in August 1835, was working for The Sun. Locke publicly admitted to being the author in 1840, in a letter to the weekly paper New World.[12] Despite Locke's claims, rumours persisted that others were involved in the articles' creation.
Two other men have been noted in connection with the hoax: Jean-Nicolas Nicollet,[10] a French astronomer travelling in America at the time (though he was in Mississippi, not New York, when the Moon-hoax issues appeared), and Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of The Knickerbocker, a literary magazine. However, there is no good evidence to indicate that anyone but Locke was the author of the hoax.
Assuming that Richard A. Locke was the author, his intentions were probably, first, to create a sensational story which would increase sales of The Sun, and, second, to ridicule some of the more extravagant astronomical theories that had recently been published. Locke had meant for the hoax to act as a satire to show how science can be and is influenced by the thoughts of religion.[4] For instance, in 1824, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, professor of astronomy at Munich University, had published a paper titled "Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One of Their Colossal Buildings". One theory is that this paper is responsible for inspiring the articles written by Locke.[13] In his paper, Gruithuisen claimed to have observed various shades of color on the lunar surface, which he correlated with climate and vegetation zones. He also observed lines and geometrical shapes, which he felt indicated the existence of walls, roads, fortifications, and cities.
Reactions
Newsboy showing a copy of the hoaxMoon Hoax, 1859 NY William Gowans, Richard Adams LockeMoonscene
According to legend, The Sun's circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained permanently greater than before, thereby establishing The Sun as a successful paper. It brought the journal to international fame, and the hoax resembled crime reports that allowed the readers to play detective, trying to discover the truth.[14][15]
However, the degree to which the hoax increased the paper's circulation has certainly been exaggerated in popular accounts of the event. It was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication and, even then, the newspaper did not issue a retraction.[16]
Herschel was initially amused by the hoax, noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. He later became annoyed when he had to answer questions from people who believed the hoax was serious.[17]
Edgar Allan Poe claimed the story was a plagiarism of his earlier work "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall", and "Hans Phaall – A Tale", published in the Southern Literary Messenger. His editor at the time was Richard Adams Locke. He later published "The Balloon-Hoax" in the same newspaper.[18] As well as "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall". The story was reprinted in the New York Transcript on September 2–5, 1835, under the headline "Lunar Discoveries, Extraordinary Aerial Voyage by Baron Hans Pfaall".[19]
Poe described a voyage to the Moon in a balloon, in which Pfaall lives for five years on the Moon with lunarians and sends back a lunarian to Earth. The Poe Moon hoax was less successful because of the satiric and comical tone of the account. Locke was able to upstage Poe and to steal his thunder. In 1846, Poe would write a biographical sketch of Locke as part of his series "The Literati of New York City" which appeared in Godey's Lady's Book.[19]
Context
The sensational reports of Richard Adams Locke were not out of place in the context of the mass proliferation of penny press newspapers such as the New York Sun which received much of their income from advertisements,[20] a business practice made sustainable by large numbers of readers. The Sun was a pioneer when it came to producing shocking and often sensationalist journalism, being the first New York newspaper to report on murders, suicides, personal events, and divorces,[21] and it was because of stories such as these that the Sun thrived in attracting readers to their articles, and thus to their advertisements.
The success of such sensational stories as the "Great Moon Hoax" can be partly attributed to the influence of contemporary speculative science. Figures like the Reverend Thomas Dick, who claimed that the Moon was inhabited by billions of beings, had captured the public's imagination in the early 19th century. Locke's hoax played on similar popular beliefs, presenting them as the latest scientific findings from the well-respected astronomer Sir John Herschel, which lent the story credibility.[22][23]
Legacy
Great Moon Hoax, Edinburgh Journal of Science, by Lilith de Thierry Freres
The Moon Trilogy - a series of fantasy novels by the Polish author Jerzy Żuławski, published in 1903–1911. The series consists of three novels: On the Silver Globe. Manuscript from the Moon, The Conqueror and Old Earth.
Nate DiMeo's historical podcast The Memory Palace dedicated a 2010 episode to the Great Moon Hoax entitled "The Moon in the Sun".[25]
The hoax inspired a three-part musical by composer Matt Dahan as part of his musical radio series Pulp Musicals.[26]
Richard Adams Locke and the Great Moon Hoax are fictionalized in chapter 14 of Félix J. Palma's 2012 novel The Map of the Sky.[citation needed]
The hoax reflected a time when readers were looking for entertainment as much as information from penny press newspapers, which would later change with the development of ethical reporting.[27]
"The Balloon-Hoax" is the title used in collections and anthologies of a newspaper article by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844 in The Sun newspaper in New York. Originally presented as a true story, it detailed European Monck Mason's trip across the Atlantic Ocean in only three days in a gas balloon. It was later revealed as a hoax and the story was retracted two days later.
Frederick William Herschel was a German-British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually land on the Moon. Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples.
Benjamin Henry Day was an American newspaper publisher who founded the New York Sun, the first penny press newspaper in the United States, in 1833.
A transient lunar phenomenon (TLP) or lunar transient phenomenon (LTP) is a short-lived change in light, color or appearance on the surface of the Moon. The term was created by Patrick Moore in his co-authorship of NASA Technical Report R-277 Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, published in 1968.
The year 1835 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
C. Herschel is a small lunar impact crater that lies on the western part of Mare Imbrium. It is named after German astronomer Caroline Herschel. It is a circular, bowl-shaped formation that has not undergone significant erosion. The interior floor has the same low albedo as the surrounding lunar mare. To the south-southwest is the similar crater Heis. C. Herschel lies on a wrinkle ridge of the lunar mare named the Dorsum Heim.
The Sun was a New York newspaper published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the first successful penny daily newspaper in the United States, and was for a time, the most successful newspaper in America.
Franz von PaulaGruithuisen was a Bavarian physician and astronomer. He taught medical students before becoming a professor of astronomy at the University of Munich in 1826.
The Moon has appeared in fiction as a setting since at least classical antiquity. Throughout most of literary history, a significant portion of works depicting lunar voyages has been satirical in nature. From the late 1800s onwards, science fiction has successively focused largely on the themes of life on the Moon, first Moon landings, and lunar colonization.
"The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, an apocalyptic science fiction story first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in December 1839.
In celestial navigation, lunar distance, also called a lunar, is the angular distance between the Moon and another celestial body. The lunar distances method uses this angle and a nautical almanac to calculate Greenwich time if so desired, or by extension any other time. That calculated time can be used in solving a spherical triangle. The theory was first published by Johannes Werner in 1524, before the necessary almanacs had been published. A fuller method was published in 1763 and used until about 1850 when it was superseded by the marine chronometer. A similar method uses the positions of the Galilean moons of Jupiter.
Reverend Thomas Dick, was a British church minister, science teacher and writer, known for his works on astronomy and practical philosophy, combining science and Christianity, and arguing for a harmony between the two.
"The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" (1835) is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in the June 1835 issue of the monthly magazine Southern Literary Messenger as "Hans Phaall -- A Tale", intended by Poe to be a hoax.
The planet Neptune was mathematically predicted before it was directly observed. With a prediction by Urbain Le Verrier, telescopic observations confirming the existence of a major planet were made on the night of September 23–24, Autumnal Equinox of 1846, at the Berlin Observatory, by astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, working from Le Verrier's calculations. It was a sensational moment of 19th-century science, and dramatic confirmation of Newtonian gravitational theory. In François Arago's apt phrase, Le Verrier had discovered a planet "with the point of his pen".
"Thou Art the Man", originally titled "Thou Art the Man!", is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844. It is an early experiment in detective fiction, like Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", though it is generally considered an inferior story.
Mary Cecilia Rogers was an American murder victim whose story became a national sensation.
Masterpieces of Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories, edited by Sam Moskowitz. It was first published in hardcover by World Publishing Co. in 1966, and reprinted by Hyperion Press in 1974.
References
↑ Vida, István Kornél (2012). "The "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835". Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. 18 (1/2): 431–441. JSTOR43488485.
↑ Maliszewski, Paul. "Paper Moon", Wilson Quarterly. Winter 2005. p. 26.
↑ István Kornél Vida (2012). "The "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835". Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (Hjeas). 18 (1/2). Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS): 434. JSTOR43488485.
↑ Goodman, Matthew (2008). The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, Basic Books [ISBNmissing]
Evans, David S., "The Great Moon Hoax", Sky & Telescope, 196 (September 1981) and 308 (October 1981).
Goodman, Matthew, The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: Basic Books, 2008) ISBN978-0-465-00257-3
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