Moon Hoax

This hoax, subtitled “A Discovery that the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings,” was originally serialized in 1835 in the New York Sun newspaper. It purported itself to be a true account that had been published in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Sir John Herschel, a well-known astronomer at the time, was credited with authorship. Herschel’s telescope, according to the story, was able to see man-bats and other animals, as well as a variety of geographical features, on the surface of the