In August of 1835, a man named Richard Adams Locke devised one of the most glorious hoaxes in history. Through a series of six newspaper articles, he announced the discovery of life on the moon.
Among the articles’ outlandish claims were the existence of unicorns, bat-people, and bipedal beavers, all living together on the moon. Sure enough, the public was fooled.
This is the story of the Great Moon Hoax of 1835.
I. The Groundwork is Laid
To understand the hoax, one must understand the motivations of its creator, Richard Adams Locke.
Locke was a reporter working at The Sun, a small New York newspaper. At the time, he was becoming increasingly frustrated with what he saw as the encroachment of religion on matters of science. For instance, he knew several geologists that stopped valuable research "because they perceived it was leading them to the awful discovery that the globe on which we live was not formed in literally six days of twenty-four hours each!" He tried to convince these geologists to continue their research, but his attempts were unsuccessful.
Locke had an interest in geology, but it was the field of astronomy that especially fascinated him. This is why he was so distraught when reading the works of religious astronomers.1
Matthew Goodman relates in his book The Sun and the Moon:
Much of the most popular and highly regarded astronomical writing of the time was being produced by theologians, while the astronomers were, by and large, a pious lot who would have readily concurred with the assertion made in 1802 by William Paley in his landmark Natural Theology that astronomy “raises to sublimer views of the Deity than any other subject affords” and “shows, beyond all other sciences, the magnificence of his operations.”2
Perhaps the most prominent promoter of this view was a man by the name of Thomas Dick.
Dick’s rise to fame was the result of his book titled The Christian Philosopher, or the Connection of Science with Religion. The book was published in 1823 and instantly became incredibly popular in Great Britain as well as the United States. Having been cemented as the foremost advocate of the existence of extraterrestrial life, Dick argued that God would not create beautiful worlds without also placing there beings intelligent enough to appreciate them.
In fact, in a later book of his titled Celestial Scenery; or the Wonders of the Planetary System Displayed, Dick postulated that “the moon… may contain a population of intelligent beings far more numerous, and perhaps far more elevated in the scale of intellect, than the inhabitants of our globe.” By his estimates, the moon could be home to “more than five times the population of the earth.”34
Worried about the seemingly dire consequences of allowing these ideas to flourish, Locke decided to do something about it. He recounted the origins of the moon hoax articles in a letter published years after the hoax:
I, therefore, resolved to throw a pebble at this Colossus, not, certainly, with the hope of rivalling the feat of David, but merely to express my independent and utter contempt for the imaginative and canting school, by endeavoring to out-imagine it, and ape its solemn cant, under the mask of dignified and plausible science.5
On August 21, 1835, a short blurb setting up the articles appeared on page two of The Sun:
The Edinburgh Courant says—“We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”6
Soon enough, the time came for the ‘discoveries’ to unfold.
II. The Articles Are Published
The articles were ostensibly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science, giving them the illusion of credibility. On top of that, they were allegedly reporting the discoveries of the prominent astronomer John Herschel, who really was doing research in South Africa at the time.7
Published over the course of six days, each article added more to the hoax. The contents of the articles are as follows:
Article 1: A telescope of vast dimensions
The first article describes John Herschel’s supposed newly invented telescope. It would be with this groundbreaking invention that he would make these great astronomical discoveries.
Locke begins the article by pouring some more gasoline on the fire of excitement burning within the reader:
In this unusual addition to our Journal, we have the happiness of making known to the British publick, and thence to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in Astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time.8
After these preliminary comments, the article went on to describe the creation of Herschel’s astounding new telescope.
Locke explains the scientific law that “an object becomes dim in proportion as it is magnified.”9 This, we are told, was the seemingly insurmountable obstacle facing Sir John Herschel.
After brainstorming with Sir David Brewster, an optical specialist, they supposedly found a solution to this most pressing problem. The plan was to somehow “[transfuse] artificial light through the focal object of vision.” To do this, they would use a second lens which is described as a “hydro-oxygen microscope.” This additional lens would be used to illuminate the telescopic image and project it onto a large canvas.10
Herschel then obtained funding from the Royal Society and his telescope was constructed. It was said to be 24 feet in diameter, with a lens weighing over 14,000 lbs. The telescope, with its massive size and additional lens, promised greater magnification than any before it. It was even claimed that Herschel believed the telescope to be so grand as to allow for the study of the moon’s entomology, if the moon did indeed contain insects.
In creating this hoax, Richard Adams Locke made up a man by the name of Dr. Andrew Grant. He told The Sun’s readers that Dr. Grant witnessed all the events that took place at the observatory, writing down everything that Herschel dictated to him. Thus, Dr. Grant was the one who provided the accounts of these incredible discoveries to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.11
Dr. Grant recounts that after adjusting his telescope so that it may uncover the secrets of the moon, Herschel paused. He paused for he was “about to crown himself with a diadem of knowledge which would give him a conscientious pre-eminence above every individual of his species...” This pause lasted for several hours in fact, before Herschel finally began his observations.
Without giving too much away, the first installment of the moon hoax series states that:
[Herschel] has obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon… [and] has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what order of things.12
For the specifics of Herschel’s lunar discoveries, everyone would have to wait for the next edition of The Sun.
Article 2: Lunar plants, animals, rivers, and beaches
The second article delves into Herschel’s first discoveries using the telescope. At first, Herschel only used the telescope to find new stars and nebulae. Understanding that these discoveries are not of much interest to the reader compared to the lunar discoveries, Locke wrote that “we shall defer our correspondent's account of these to future pages.”
The article goes on to describe Herschel’s first lunar discovery. After adjusting his microscope, his field of view “was covered throughout its entire area with a beautifully distinct, and even vivid representation of basaltic rock.” We can only assume that to his great delight, Herschel then discovered that the greenish brown rock was “profusely covered with a dark red flower.”
The astronomer had finally found “the first organic production of nature, in a foreign world, ever revealed to the eyes of men.”
Shifting his field of view, Herschel found a lunar forest. Dr. Grant tells us that “The trees… were of one unvaried kind, and unlike any I have seen, except the largest kind of yews in the English churchyards, which they in some respects resemble.”
Soon after, Herschel discovered the existence of a beach on the moon. It was a beach of “brilliant white sand” with water that was “nearly as blue as that of the deep ocean.” The two men saw huge waves crash onto the shore and “were speechless with admiration.”
Plants and beaches were great and all, but what the two men really wanted to discover was the existence of lunar animals. After hours of searching, Herschel had a magnificent great idea.
They would remove the magnification lens responsible for the super in-depth view of the moon’s surface. This way, they’d have a zoomed-out view of the moon and could quickly search for some valleys, the most likely place for animals to be found.
After admiring some impressive quartz formations, they found a valley surrounded by “a perfect zone of woods.” Dr. Grant described the woods as containing “[s]mall collections of trees, of every imaginable kind.” It was on the south-eastern side of the woods that they finally found some animals.
The two men saw “continuous herds of brown quadrupeds” which were similar to bison. After that, they discovered a goat species of “a bluish lead color” which only had one horn. In the center of the valley was “a large branching river, abounding with lovely islands, and water-birds of numerous kinds.”
These birds included grey pelicans as well as black-and-white cranes. While the men did not catch sight of any fish, they “could easily guess the purpose with which [the birds] plunged their long necks so deeply beneath the water.”
The final animal discovery of that day was perhaps the strangest yet.
The two men caught a quick glimpse of “a strange amphibious creature, of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach.” After losing sight of this curious creature, they called it a day. Clouds were forming in the lunar atmosphere, which would make it difficult for any further observations to take place that night.
The discoveries described in the second article ostensibly took place on January 10th, 1835. The article concludes with these words from Dr. Grant:
The nights of the 11th and 12th being cloudy, were unfavorable to observation; but on those of the 13th and 14th further animal discoveries were made of the most exciting interest to every human being.13
Article 3: The horned bear and biped beaver
The third article begins with more descriptions of the moon’s topography. Herschel decided to explore the western regions of the moon this time, finding numerous mountains, craters, and forests.14
In the process of their exploration, we are told Herschel has discovered 38 species of trees and almost twice as many types of plants.
On top of that, he classified nine mammal species and five species of ovipara. Among the mammals he found were previously mentioned quadrupeds and two entirely new discoveries.
These new animals are the horned bear and the biped beaver. While the horned bear is not elaborated upon, we learn a bunch about these beavers.
The beavers, Dr. Grant tells us, look just like the beavers of Earth except they walk on two feet and don’t have a tail. The biped beaver “carries its young in its arms like a human being” and lives in huts of impressive quality. They reside exclusively alongside bodies of water and have seemingly mastered the use of fire, as the smoke rising from their huts implies.15
Herschel then moved southward with his telescope, finding more lakes, quartz, and islands. On one oval-shaped island, he found lunar palm trees and a new type of quadruped that looked like a miniature zebra. Herschel also saw blue and gold birds and all kinds of shellfish on the lakeshore.
This concluded the third installment of the astronomical discoveries. In a different section of the newspaper, The Sun apologized for how brief that day’s moon article had been compared to the previous one. It promised its readers that tomorrow’s article would contain the discoveries they’ve been waiting for.16
Article 4: The four foot tall man-bat
In the fourth installment of the series, Herschel and Dr. Grant reveal their greatest discovery yet.
After gazing upon a flock of sheep in a lunar meadow, the two men shifted their view toward some cliffs and found a specimen of much greater interest.
A group of “large winged creatures” descended from the cliffs onto the ground below. These creatures, who were completely unlike any species of bird, began walking upright toward a nearby forest.
Herschel zoomed in as much as possible to inspect these creatures. Here is Dr. Grant’s description after seeing them for the first time:
They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs.
The face… was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang outang.
The mouth, however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw, and by lips far more human than those of any species of simia genus.
They then saw the human-like creatures engaging in conversation, concluding that they were rational beings. Herschel and Dr. Grant decided to name them “Vespertilio-homo, or man-bat.”
Dr. Grant relays that “they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, notwithstanding that some of their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.”
Towards the end of the article, there appears to be some information that has been expunged. The editors of the Edinburgh Journal of Science assure the reader that the expunged material will one day be published “with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers.” We are told that these select people “were permitted, under the stipulation of temporary secrecy, to visit the laboratory, and become eye-witnesses of the wonders which they were requested to attest.”
The fourth installment of the series comes to an end with a cliffhanger. After several hours of hazy conditions, the mist finally dissipated and they turned their sights on a crater called Tycho. What they saw there “added treasures to human knowledge which angels might well desire to win.”
The reader is left with the promise that “[m]any parts of the following extract will remain forever in the chronicles of time.”1718
Article 5: The sapphire temple
Locke faced a problem when writing the fifth article. How was he to keep the readers’ excitement after the last huge discovery?
Article four revealed the existence of human-like beings on the moon, the lunar man-bats. There was now a risk of losing people’s interest in the series if the later editions did not build on this excitement.
As Alex Boese from the Museum of Hoaxes puts it, his solution “was to present readers with a mystery: the discovery of an apparently abandoned temple, built of polished sapphire.”19
When Herschel first found this sapphire temple, he could only see part of it. The telescope’s image showed just 50 feet of the building, which by Dr. Grant’s estimate, was around a sixth of the entire temple. Dr. Grant states that the two of them instantly reduced the zoom of the telescope “so as to embrace the whole structure in one view, and then indeed it was most beautiful.”
The temple is described as such:
It was an equitriangular temple, built of polished sapphire, or of some resplendent blue stone, which, like it, displayed a myriad points of golden light twinkling and scintillating in the sunbeams.
The roof was composed of some yellow metal, and divided into three compartments, which were… subdivided, curbed, and separated, so as to present a mass of violently agitated flames rising from a common source of conflagration and terminating in wildly waving points.
Though a few openings in these metallic flames we perceived a large sphere of a darker kind of metal nearly of a clouded copper color, which they enclosed and seemingly raged around, as if hieroglyphically consuming it.
Dr. Grant leaves the reader with a question about this mysterious temple.
What did the ingenious builders mean by the globe surrounded by flames? Did they by this record any past calamity of their world, or predict any future one of ours?20
Article 6: Superior man-bats of a higher order
In the sixth and final installment of the series, Herschel and Dr. Grant discovered a superior species of man-bat.
Searching near the sapphire temple with their telescope, groups of familiar creatures soon came into view. After adjusting the telescope for closer examination, they found creatures that resembled the man-bats they observed previously. The difference is that these creatures were “of larger stature than the former specimens” and “in every respect an improved variety of the race.”
When Herschel and Dr. Grant happened upon the superior man-bats, they were having a lovely time eating different kinds of fruits. The main one was “a large yellow fruit like a gourd, sections of which they divided with their fingers, and ate with rather uncouth voracity, throwing away the rind.” Dr. Grant recalls that the creatures were “eminently happy” and also polite toward each other.
After observing these creatures, Dr. Grant explains:
We had no opportunity of seeing them actually engaged in any work of industry or art; and so far as we could judge, they spent their happy hours in collecting various fruits in the woods, in eating, flying, bathing, and loitering about on the summits of precipices.
Many of the lunar animals that the pair had discovered previously were found in this area too, living in harmony with the superior man-bats.
In this final article of a most spectacular series, the moon was painted as a utopia of sorts.
The universal state of amity among all classes of lunar creatures, and the apparent absence of every carnivorous or ferocious creatures, gave us the most refined pleasure, and doubly endeared to us this lovely nocturnal companion of our larger, but less favored world.
After a very eventful and taxing evening, Herschel and his assistants went to sleep.
They awoke the next morning to the shouts of some farmers who were passing by. To their shock, the observatory had caught on fire. As the sun came up, its rays had been concentrated through the giant lens of the telescope, causing the fire.
The hydro-oxygen microscope’s reflectors all melted in the fire, and the viewing wall of the observatory was completely destroyed. Luckily, the building didn’t burn down due to it being thickly covered with a coat of Roman plaster.
By the time the telescope was ready for use again, the moon was no longer visible. John Herschel redirected his studies toward the planets, starting with Saturn. It took until March for the moon to be viewable again. By then, Herschel was “so enthusiastically absorbed in demonstrating his brilliant discoveries in the southern constellations” that he didn’t make time to further study the moon.
One night, when the weather was sufficiently clear, Herschel’s assistants seized the opportunity to study the moon themselves.
They discovered several new species of lunar animals, but more notably, they discovered an even more superior species of man-bat. Here’s how they described them:
In stature they did not exceed those last described, but they were of infinitely greater personal beauty, and appeared in our eyes scarcely less lovely than the general representations of angels by the more imaginative schools of painters.
Their social economy seemed to be regulated by laws or ceremonies exactly like those prevailing in the Vale of the Triads, but their works of art were more numerous, and displayed a proficiency of skill quite incredible to all except actual observers.2122
This account of the highest-order man-bats concludes the series. The next sections delve into the popular response to the articles and their impact.
III. The People Are Fooled
By some estimates, up to 90% of people in New York City believed the hoax. The articles, initially printed in The Sun, were being reprinted by rival newspapers and soon spread to the rest of the country.
The news of Herschel’s discoveries quickly found its way to New Haven, Connecticut, where a Yale student at the time recalled:
The literati—students and professors, doctors in divinity and law—and all the rest of the reading community, looked daily for the arrival of the New York mail with unexampled avidity and implicit faith. Have you seen the accounts of Sir John Herschel's wonderful discoveries? Have you read the Sun? Have you heard the news of the man in the Moon? These were the questions that met you every where. It was the absorbing topic of the day. Nobody expressed or entertained a doubt as to the truth of the story.
Back then, Yale was the leading university when it came to astrology, and two Yale professors were especially interested in The Sun’s articles. Their names were Denison Olmsted and Elias Loomas and they decided to travel to New York to see the Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science for themselves.
Showing up at The Sun’s office, the professors asked the owner of the newspaper, Benjamin Day, for the copy of the Supplement so they could inspect its veracity. Day promptly sent them on a wild-goose chase, since of course there was no Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science and he didn’t want the secret of the hoax to get out.
The professors were sent downstairs to Richard Adams Locke to request from him the copy of the Supplement. Locke broke the unfortunate news to them that the Supplement was not in The Sun’s office but instead was in the hands of a printer on Williams Street. Locke gave them the address of the printer and then hurried to Williams Street so that he could get him before the professors did.
Once the professors got there, the printer had to apologize, for he had just sent the Supplement to another shop for proofreading.
The professors continued on in their search for the Supplement, but eventually had to throw in the towel since they absolutely could not miss the afternoon steamboat back to New Haven.23
IV. The Sun is Enriched
As one might imagine, the moon hoax series was incredibly profitable for The Sun.
By some accounts, it caused the “paper's circulation [to jump] to more than 19,000, requiring the press to run for ten hours a day to meet demand and giving the Sun a circulation greater than The Times of London.”24
It’s important to take that claim with a grain of salt though since it’s in dispute. What’s not in dispute is that The Sun made a bunch of money off the hoax.
The newspaper began selling pamphlets with the full text of the lunar discoveries. In addition to that, they sold lithographic prints of the various fantastical lunar discoveries of Sir John Herschel.
No one knows for sure how many of these pamphlets were sold. According to the antiquarian William Gowans, The Sun sold 60,000 pamphlets in under a month.
Nowadays, the pamphlets containing the full text of the lunar discoveries are collector's items, with only 16 known copies in existence.25
Even after the articles were revealed as a hoax, The Sun’s circulation did not go down.26 It saw continued success and remained in publication for over a century, before finally shutting down in 1950.
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, pp. 274–276.
Ibid., p. 191.
Ibid., pp. 192–193.
Dick, Thomas. Celestial Scenery; or the Wonders of the Planetary System Displayed. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1838, p. 270, https://archive.org/details/celestialscenery00dick.
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, pp. 276–277.
Boese, Alex. “The Great Moon Hoax.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
Ibid.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day One.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/.
Ibid.
Fernie, Donald. Setting Sail for the Universe: Astronomers and Their Discoveries. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2002, p. 70.
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, p. 137.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day One.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day Two.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/P1.
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, p. 169.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day Three.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/P2.
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, p. 170.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day Four.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/P3.
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, pp. 172–173.
Boese, Alex. “The Great Moon Hoax.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day Five.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/P4.
Locke, Richard Adams. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (Text) - Day Six.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/text/display/the_great_moon_hoax_of_1835_text/P5.
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, pp. 206–207.
Ibid., pp. 178–181.
Copeland, David A. “A Series of Fortunate Events.” Journalism History, vol. 33, no. 3, Oct. 2007, pp. 140–150, https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2007.12062738.
Boese, Alex. “The Great Moon Hoax.” Museum of Hoaxes, http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
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, p. 264.