Fake claims of life on the moon
Why a newspaper lied to its readers
Greetings Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights. Why would a newspaper lie to its readers about life on the moon? Yet this is exactly what a New York paper did - boosting its circulation but causing mass panic.
The last sixty years has seen repeated claims that the Lunar landings of the Apollo missions were a hoax and that no human being has ever set foot on the moon. Scientists have torn their hair out countering these conspiracy theories. Yet it's nothing new. Fake news about the moon has been circulating for years. Back in 1835, New York was gripped by a series of newspaper articles in The Sun claiming that life had been discovered on the Moon. It turned out to be anything but the truth.
English astronomer discovers life on the moon...or does he?
The discovery had allegedly been made by an English astronomer, Sir John Herscel (1792-1871). He was a perfectly respectable figure in his field, having been president of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1834, he journeyed to Cape Town, South Africa, to make a detailed study of the southern skies.
As news of his observations circulated, a journalist decided to spice things up a bit. Richard Adams Locke (1800-1871) clearly felt that descriptions of comets and nebulae were insufficiently juicy for readers of The Sun - the New York newspaper that employed him. So, Locke falsely attributed a series of claims about life on the Moon to Herschel.
This included the presence on the lunar surface of unicorns and bat-liked humanoid figures. There were also trees, oceans, and beaches. Sales of The Sun boomed as New Yorkers were gripped by the story. When the newspaper issued a special pamphlet about the strange beings on the Moon - it sold 60,000 copies in a week.
What life had Herschel (reportedly) found on the Moon?
The article described Herschel's super-powerful telescope which identified "magnificent forests" on the Moon, skirted by rich meadows. Roaming this lush landscape were "brown quadrupeds" resembling bison, though smaller. There were also monstrous animals including species similar to reindeer, elk, moose, beavers, and a "horned bear".
Herschel was hoping to find creatures similar to humanity and was not to be disappointed. Because as his telescope surveyed the surface of the Moon - up popped humanoids with wings extending from their shoulders to their calves. They were just four feet high. Their bodies were covered in "glossy copper coloured hair". And their faces were a "yellowish flesh colour". Herschel was able to make out that they were conversing with each other so were clearly "rational beings".
It was decided to term these humanoids: Vespertilio-homo, or man-bat. "They are doubtless innocent and happy creatures", though Herschel felt some of their raucous behaviour wouldn't accord "with our terrestrial notions of decorum".
All of this was nonsense, made up by Locke. When it was exposed as a fraud, everybody saw the funny side. For his part, Herschel appears to have been amused by the tall tales. He wrote that if people were "silly enough" to believe this stuff then that was their own business. It all seemed very harmless to him.
Hoaxer enjoys a successful career
Locke's career was unaffected by the revelation of his hoax. It was never his intention to genuinely fool the reading public, but simply to boost newspaper sales. However, he did face accusations of plagiarism from the horror novelist Edgar Allen Poe, who claimed Locke had based his fake account of the Moon on his story: The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.
Locke went on to edit a daily newspaper in New York, the New Era. Tongue firmly in cheek, he wrote a year after the hoax that the New Era would be more than happy to continue covering Herschel's lunar insights and that maybe he would eventually prove Locke's account of unicorns and winged humans to be true.
