"A lithograph published in the New York Sun newspaper in 1835 showing life on the Moon. Credit: Wikipedia"
from the article
Posted on 04/04/2011 1:57:43 PM PDT by fishtank
The great Moon Hoax of 1835
April 4, 2011 By Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today
"Say the words “Moon Hoax” these days, and everyone thinks you are talking about the people who don’t believe the Apollo astronauts ever went to the Moon. But back in 1835 there was the original Moon hoax that thousands of people fell for, despite the tall tale being complete fiction. A series of articles were published in the New York Sun newspaper reporting incredible new astronomical observations of the Moon supposedly made by astronomer Sir John Herschel during an observing run at the Cape of Good Hope with his powerful new telescope. Detailed descriptions of winged beings, plants, animals and a sapphire temple increased sales and subscriptions to the fledgling newspaper."
More at the link.
LOTS of madeup science fiction from the early 1800s is STILL believed today.............
"A lithograph published in the New York Sun newspaper in 1835 showing life on the Moon. Credit: Wikipedia"
from the article
Interesting post...somewhat amusing.
I’m wondering if that’s where Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism got his idea of Pilgrim type people living on the moon.
Must have been a Scientology pub...............
Plenty of gullible people in the world, both then and today who believe in lots of foolish stuff...
FLASH:
Life on moon extinct due to global warming.
That was my first thought, too, as well.
The early 1800s must have been an interesting time, to say the least.
Here’s a link to a man-bat drawing.....
That’s obviously wrong. Everyone knows that the skeleton discovered on the moon by our Apollo astronauts was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes when they found it.
Hmmmm. Looks like moonbats have been around since well before the ‘60s.
The reincarnation of The New York Sun not so many years ago (now only available on the web) produced a very different newspaper than the one that printed the moon hoax of 1835.
WOW!!!!!!!
That looks like a great paper (no hoax....).
Suckers. Everyone knows that stuff is all on Mars.
But, did Herschel discover the birth certificate there?
Hmmmm.
Just like Global Warming.
He meant it to be a joke, but soon found out that it was very profitable. He figured a way to scam the public through “carbon credits” where he had a product that he never had to deliver that didn’t exist.
The descriptions were allegedly reprinted from the nonexistent Edinburgh Journal of Climate Science, and only several decades after the articles were published did questions arise about the truth of these tales. The newspaper did not issue a retraction back then, and now, even over 32 years later has not issued a full retraction of it, either.
It is said that Gore was initially amused by the hoax, noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. But he became annoyed later when he had to answer questions from people who believed the hoax was a scam.
FYI, the idea that Joseph Smith believed in moon people came from someone writing about it in the 1880's, 40 years after the fact. There are no contemporary accounts of Joseph teaching this, and nothing in his own writings about moon people.
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