It started on a Tuesday. August 25, 1835. People walking through the humid streets of lower Manhattan stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the front page of The Sun. The headline wasn't just big; it was world-altering. According to the paper, Sir John Herschel—the most famous astronomer of the era—had pointed a massive, brand-new telescope at the lunar surface and seen life.
Not just moss or craters.
Life.
We’re talking about the great moon hoax of 1835, a series of six articles that basically invented the concept of "viral" fake news before the internet was even a spark in someone's brain. For a week, New York was obsessed. People were genuinely convinced that the moon was populated by bat-winged humanoids, bipedal beavers, and blue goats. It sounds ridiculous now, right? But back then, science was moving so fast that people were primed to believe almost anything as long as it sounded technical enough.
The Man Behind the Curtain: Richard Adams Locke
The guy who actually wrote this was Richard Adams Locke. He was a reporter for The Sun, a "penny press" paper that lived and died by its daily circulation numbers. Locke was smart—maybe too smart. He didn't just make up a story; he crafted a masterpiece of satire that most readers completely missed. He claimed the information was being reprinted from a (non-existent) supplement of the Edinburgh Journal of Science.
Why does that matter?
Because it gave the story "authority."
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Locke’s descriptions were incredibly vivid. He wrote about "Vespertilio-homo," or man-bats, who stood four feet tall and were covered in copper-colored fur. He described them as having thin, membranous wings and faces that looked suspiciously like orangutans. He even went into detail about the moon's geography, describing "The Vale of Triads" and "The Mare Foecunditatis" with such precision that even some scientists of the day were scratching their heads, wondering if they’d missed a major discovery.
Why Everyone Believed the Great Moon Hoax of 1835
You have to understand the 19th-century mindset. This was an age of discovery. Steam engines were changing travel. The telegraph was on the horizon. If humans could conquer the oceans and the rails, why couldn't a genius like Herschel conquer the distance between Earth and the Moon?
Religion played a role, too.
Many people at the time believed in "plurality of worlds." The idea was that God wouldn't create all those planets just to let them sit empty. It was almost expected that we’d find neighbors eventually. So, when The Sun published these reports, it didn't feel like a lie to many—it felt like a confirmation of what they already suspected.
The prose was dense. Locke used "technobabble" before that was even a word. He talked about the "hydro-oxygen" microscope and the "object glass" of the telescope being twenty-four feet in diameter. It sounded legit. Honestly, it was the 1835 version of a deepfake.
The Fallout and the "Oops" Moment
By the time the sixth article ran, The Sun had the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the world. They were printing nearly 20,000 copies a day. For context, most papers at the time were lucky to move 2,000.
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But then the cracks started to show.
Other newspapers were getting jealous. They wanted a piece of the action. Reporters from the New York Herald started poking around, trying to get copies of the original Scottish journal Locke cited. Spoiler alert: it didn't exist.
The most hilarious part of the whole great moon hoax of 1835 is how Sir John Herschel found out about it. He was actually in South Africa at the time, doing real astronomy. He had no idea his name was being used to sell papers in New York. When he finally heard about the "discoveries" attributed to him, he was initially amused. He supposedly joked that his own real discoveries could never be as exciting as the ones Locke imagined. But eventually, the constant stream of letters from people asking about the bat-men got old. He got pretty annoyed.
A Lesson in Media Literacy
Locke eventually admitted to a friend that he wrote the whole thing. He claimed it was meant to be a satire of "Serious Christian" science, specifically targeting people like Thomas Dick, who wrote popular books claiming billions of people lived on the planets in our solar system. Locke thought the story was so over-the-top that nobody would actually take it seriously.
He was wrong.
People loved it. Even after the hoax was exposed, The Sun didn't lose its readers. In fact, people weren't even that mad. They enjoyed the ride. It was entertainment. It was the "War of the Worlds" broadcast a century early.
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Why This History Still Matters Today
The great moon hoax of 1835 isn't just a funny trivia point. It’s a blueprint for how misinformation spreads. It uses a mix of real names (Herschel), fake sources (the Edinburgh Journal), and emotional appeal (the wonder of new worlds).
We see this every day on social media now.
When you see a headline that feels too good—or too weird—to be true, it probably is. The 1835 hoax worked because it catered to what people wanted to believe. It validated their worldview. That’s a powerful drug.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this specific moment in history, here’s how to actually research it without falling for modern myths:
- Read the original articles. Most are archived online through the Library of Congress or university digital collections. Looking at the actual 1835 layout helps you see how convincing it looked next to "real" news.
- Check out "The Sun and the Moon" by Matthew Goodman. It’s probably the best narrative history of the event. He goes deep into Locke’s life and the cutthroat world of 19th-century New York journalism.
- Cross-reference with Herschel’s actual journals. If you want to see what real 1830s astronomy looked like, compare Locke’s bat-men with Herschel’s actual observations of the Southern Hemisphere’s stars. The difference is stark.
- Analyze the "Penny Press" business model. Understanding how these papers made money (per-issue sales vs. subscriptions) explains why they were so willing to risk their reputation for a week of high sales.
The moon is quiet, dusty, and definitely doesn't have bipedal beavers. But for one week in August 1835, New York was the center of a lunar civilization, all thanks to a guy with a wild imagination and a printing press. It’s a reminder that while technology changes, human nature—our desire for wonder and our susceptibility to a good story—stays exactly the same.