What happened
In August 1835, the New York Sun, a two-year-old one-cent paper, ran a six-part "reprint" from an Edinburgh science journal. It said the real astronomer Sir John Herschel had built a giant telescope and seen life on the Moon.
Day by day it got wilder: goat-sized blue unicorns, beavers that walk on two legs and use fire, and then, on the Friday, copper-haired bat-people. That same day the Sun called itself "the greatest of any daily paper in the world".
The journal it quoted had shut down years earlier, and Herschel, working in South Africa, knew nothing about it. On the day of the last instalment, a rival editor named the real author: the Sun's own editor, Richard Adams Locke.
The Sun never owned up. It said it couldn't confess until the British papers weighed in, and in the meantime it sold the whole story as a pamphlet, with souvenir prints of the Moon animals.
Sources (43)
The sources behind this episode's script. Where we couldn't read one in full, it says so. Links go to the original where it's online.
Primary: the hoax text
- Museum of Hoaxes transcription, Days 1–6: hoaxes.org (Days 2–6: append /P1 … /P5)
- Locke, The Moon Hoax (W. Gowans, New York, 1859), Project Gutenberg #62779: gutenberg.org ; scan: archive.org
- Sun front page, 25 Aug 1835 (low-res): commons.wikimedia.org ; category: commons.wikimedia.org
- LOC lithograph "Lunar animals and other objects" (1835): loc.gov (not opened; 403)
- LOC Italian lithograph: loc.gov (not opened; 403)
- Chronicling America, Sun 1833–1916 (sn83030272): digitised run appears to begin in 1859, per Wayback copy web.archive.org
Primary: contemporary and near-contemporary accounts (read directly)
- Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. 2 (1838): archive.org
- Edgar Allan Poe, "Richard Adams Locke", Literary America MS (1848), eapoe.org: eapoe.org
- William N. Griggs, The Celebrated "Moon Story," Its Origin and Incidents (1852): archive.org
- P. T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World (1865), ch. "The Moon-Hoax": gutenberg.org
- Frank M. O'Brien, The Story of the Sun (1918): archive.org
- Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876), searched; the hoax letter is not in it: gutenberg.org
- 1872 Bennett obituary (Herald fire, relaunch 31 Aug 1835), USC historic newspapers: historicnewspapers.sc.edu
Primary 1835–36 newspaper and letter quotes, seen only via Museum of Hoaxes
- Sun: 13 Aug, 28 Aug, 1 Sep, 16 Sep, 22 Sep 1835; 18 Feb 1871.
- Herald: 31 Aug, 1 Sep, 3 Sep, 27 Oct, 17 Nov, 10 Dec 1835.
- Evening Star, 20 Sep 1835.
- New Haven Daily Herald, 3 Sep 1835.
- Liverpool Mercury, 25 Sep 1835.
- Herschel's letter to Caroline Herschel (~1837).
- Herschel's unsent letter to the Athenaeum, 21 Aug 1836.
- Main page: hoaxes.org
Scholarship
- Goodman, M. (2008), The Sun and the Moon, Basic Books. Read only his excerpt: gothamcenter.org
- Crowe, M. J. (1986), The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900, CUP; Crowe (1981), "New Light on the Moon Hoax", Sky & Telescope. Not read (restricted).
- Ruskin, S. W. (2002), "A Newly-Discovered Letter of J.F.W. Herschel Concerning the 'Great Moon Hoax'", JHA 33: 71–74, doi:10.1177/002182860203300108. Not read.
- Copeland, D. A. (2007), "A Series of Fortunate Events: Why People Believed Richard Adams Locke's Moon Hoax", Journalism History 33(3). Not read.
- Vida, I. K. (2012), "The 'Great Moon Hoax' of 1835", HJEAS 18(1/2), JSTOR 43488485. Not read (via JSTOR Daily).
- Martinez, C. (2011), "E. A. Poe's 'Hans Pfaall,' the Penny Press…", Edgar Allan Poe Review 12(1). Not read (via JSTOR Daily).
- Castagnaro, M. (2009), PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon. Not read (via Museum of Hoaxes).
- Jenkins, B., "Commercial scientific journals and their editors in Edinburgh, 1819–1832": research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk
Institutional and reference
- LOC Folklife blog, Hall (2014), "Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon Hoax": blogs.loc.gov (contains the 1844 Locke error)
- Smithsonian Magazine, Zielinski (2015): smithsonianmag.com
- Edinburgh Journal of Science catalogue record (CiNii): ci.nii.ac.jp
- Royal Museums Greenwich, Herschel 20 ft mirror: rmg.co.uk
- ASSA, Herschel's 20 ft telescope: assa.saao.ac.za
- Sheffield NFCA, "Exhibition of a Hydro-Oxygen Microscope" handbill (1833): archives.sheffield.ac.uk
- Science Museum Group, microscopy handbills: collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
- Museum of Hoaxes, the Balloon Hoax: hoaxes.org
- TCU Teaching Transatlanticism, Poe's Balloon Hoax: teachingtransatlanticism.tcu.edu
- Britannica, "The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 Was Sci-Fi Passed Off as News": britannica.com (403, not read)
- Clements Library, "Life on the Moon": clements.umich.edu (403, not read)
Journalism (used for corroboration or to trace errors)
- JSTOR Daily, Wills (2017): daily.jstor.org (contains the 1844 Locke error and the "forty thousand" pamphlet figure)
- EarthSky (2023): earthsky.org (contains several errors, listed above)
- Wikipedia, "Great Moon Hoax" (map only): en.wikipedia.org