History Schmistory: August 25. Life on the Moon?

1835: The New York Sun begins to perpetuate what later became known as the Great Moon Hoax, six articles written by a fictitious doctor who claimed that he viewed the moon through “an immense telescope of an entirely new principle” and discovered it was inhabited by, among other things, bat-people…

 

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


The articles caused quite a stir, not seen again until another bat-like hoax hit the mainstream many moons later…

By Vinya [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By Vinya [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons