Newspaper editors in the 1880s were known to fill empty space on their newspapers with wild made up stories.
The New York SUN, in the early 1800s got it’s start with wild stories about finding flying men on the moon.
He we are, a hundred years later, and the newspapers are still full of fiction.
Some of my favorites came from a guy who manned the first weather station on Pike’s Peak. He telegraphed weather conditions to the newspaper in Colorado Springs. He got bored with that and started making up and telegraphing wild stories. One was about how gigantic rats had attacked him and his wife and daughter, killing the daughter. He managed to kill the rats with electricity from the telegraph. He didn’t have a wife or daughter up there, but that didn’t stop him making a grave marker for the girl. He also reported that the Peak had erupted as a volcano.