The Great Moon Hoax of 1835, Part 1

In August 1835, the New York Sun ran a series about some utterly mind-blowing discoveries made by Sir John Herschel about the lunar surface. The serial had everything: moon poppies, goat-like unicorns, lunar beavers and even bat people.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
cry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson and who doesn't love
a good hope story? So that there's actually a news
series that we're going to talk about today, and we

(00:21):
have to kind of air quote the word news. But
it's an important landmark in journalism history as well as
cultural history. It also involves the history of mass media
and even sort of a lesson in in gullibility and
kind of crowd mentality. Uh. This is a topic that
The Memory Palace actually did a short episode on back
in and that episode is called The Moon in the Sun,

(00:43):
and it's worth a listen. Uh. It is a brief
but very enjoyable So conspiracy theories and cartoons like Tech
Savery's The Cat that Hated People aside. Do you remember
that cartoon, Tracy, I do not. It was about a
cat who hated people. He lived in New York City
and so he got himself on a rocket to the
moon so he could be alone and enjoy it. But

(01:03):
of course the moon was full of crazy things that
made him just as annoyed as Earth and even more
so so much so that he figured out a way
to get back to Earth, and even though New York
did not treat him while, he was very happy. But
we know that in fact, that is fallacious information, and
that the moon is basically pretty empty. There are some
things there, but not crazy horn people have shown in

(01:24):
that cartoon walking around. But in five a New York
newspaper printed a series of stories about amazing discoveries on
the lunar landscape. And we are first going to talk
at length about the incredible descriptions of the amazing things
that were allegedly seen on the lunar surface through a telescope.

(01:47):
One thing I noticed during my research about this news
series is that the articles, and again there are six
of them, and they're very lengthy, kind of get summarized
to this point where it's like two to five sentences
about each one made and some don't even cover that. Uh,
and you lose a lot of the amazing and sometimes
crazy descriptions of these discoveries. So Tracy and I are

(02:09):
actually gonna walk through the text with a lot more description.
We're going to break down a lot more of its uh.
And that makes this a two parter because there's a
lot to talk about. Even though we're not covering everything
in that quote historical account, because that would take hours,
it's still going to take quite a bit of time.
And so, uh, this first part we're going to talk

(02:30):
a lot about those uh, those entries in the New
York Sun. The second part of this two parter will
wrap up the account as it was published in serial form,
and then we'll talk about kind of the reception these
claims God and sort of the atmosphere of the culture
at the time and how that sort of enabled and
provided a fertile ground for this hoax to happen. So

(02:51):
before the theories began, the small teaser appeared in the
New York Sun, and that was on Friday, August thirty five.
And this little teaser read quote, we have just learned
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

(03:15):
an immense telescope of an entirely new principle. And the
city that was being referenced in that sentence was Edinburgh. Yeah,
that was it was placed again It was a tiny
little teaser, and it was placed as though it was
put there by the Edinburgh Current. Now, the first entry
in this series appeared in the paper on Tuesday August

(03:36):
uh still five, so a few days later, so that
that little teaser had been allowed to sit for a bit,
and it was titled quote great astronomical discoveries lately made
by Sir John Herschel l l D f R S
at the Cape of Good Hope, from the supplement to
the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Sir John Herschel is not
an entirely new name on the podcast. We mentioned him

(03:59):
as the nephew of Caroline Herschel in our episode on
Astronomy's Cinderella. Yeah Well referenced Caroline very briefly towards the
end of the second episode. But this article, uh, this
first entry ran on the front page of the New
York Sun, and it took up about seventy of the
front page, and it opened with this, In this unusual

(04:21):
addition to our journal, we have the happiness of making
known to the British public, 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. And again they're placing

(04:43):
this as though it had been These were notes to
the Edinburgh Journal of Science that were then being reprinted
in New York. It goes on to build up the
announcement before making it, and it describes the awe of
such a discovery and how it makes us earth bound
creatures feel almost like we suddenly have super now patural powers.
Herschel is described as setting up his stupendous apparatus, which

(05:05):
was this new telescope, which was quote of vast dimensions
and entirely new principle, and then he has described as
pausing for several hours before looking through it, so that
he could collect himself and prepare for the discoveries that
he was about to make. Yeah, the article assured the
reader at this point that Herschel was right to do

(05:27):
so because the things that he saw in his first
hour of observation are incomparable in the way in which
they're they're going to advance human knowledge. His telescope, the
article said, rendered his view of objects on the lunar
surface quote fully equal to that which the naked eye
commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of a hundred yards.

(05:48):
An important thing to note at this point is that
the article title makes it sort of sound like it
was written by Sir John Herschel, but the actual entry
is written as introduced from the point of view of
the newspaper reported to them through Dr Andrew Grant, and
that's who The New York Sun described as an assistant

(06:09):
to the astronomer. The Sun assured readers that the notes
that Grant had shared with the publication were almost as
thorough as thorough as those of Herschel himself. After the intro,
the articles then are framed as being written by Andrew
Grant himself. Uh So, the rest of the August entry

(06:29):
went on to describe in great detail Herschel's telescope. And
the reason for this lengthy description, and I mean it
is in great detail according to this article, is that
quote a knowledge of the one is essential to the
credibility of the other. So they've they're kind of setting
it up that once readers understand how amazing this telescope is,

(06:50):
then they won't for a second doubt its ability to
see these things that no one else had previously seen.
It claimed that this apparatus was in diameter or seven
point three meters, and this would have made it six
times the size of the scout the telescope that his father,
William Herschel had built. To make some modern comparisons, the

(07:12):
Hubble telescope is fourteen feet or four point three meters
in diameter. The Grand Telescope e oh Canarius in the
Canary Islands, which is currently the biggest optic telescope on Earth,
is thirty four ft or ten point four meters in diameter.
So so it was basically claiming that this telescope was

(07:32):
was huge, huge, even comparison to other telescopes of today.
Oh yeah. And at this point, remember they're sort of
building on this idea. You know, they're they're referencing William Herschel,
who at that point was a very well known astronomer.
The discovery of Uranus had happened in the recent past,
and so they're kind of building, uh, scientific credibility by

(07:55):
referencing him and talking about how his son is advancing
telescopic technology, so am much more. Uh, and apparently this
new telescope that they're they were describing, which was reported
as weighing nearly seven tons, also possessed a hydro oxygen microscope,
so it combined telescopic technology with microscopic technology, and this

(08:16):
projected the telescopic image onto a screen of canvas and
allowed for clear magnification of far distant objects. How big
and clear did this article claim it made things? It
was reported that this telescope they're describing would have a
magnification of forty two thousand times. So this was the
first of the six entries in the series. And you

(08:38):
will notice it has said almost nothing about the moon.
Yet this is all set up at this point, and
before we get to the juicy stuff, do you want
to pause for a word from a sponsor. Let's do,
because then we can have glats of juicy stuff close together.
So back to the New York Sun's account as relayed
to them by Dr Andrew Grant of the work of

(09:00):
to John Herschel Uh. The second entry that the newspaper published,
which was the next day, is where things really get cooking.
So in terms of UH descriptions, it really sort of
blew things wide open. It first established the timeline of
Herschel having left London on September four, eighteen thirty four,
transporting when he did this, his assistance and his new

(09:23):
lenses by ship to the Cape of Good Hope. And
it also described the installation of the telescope in great detail,
talking about like how it was laid out, how they
built a foundation for it, etcetera, further establishing the credibility
of the discoveries they were about to share. The New
York Sun reported that the faithful day on which Herschel

(09:45):
turned his telescope to the moon was January thirty five,
at about nine thirty in the evening. The lunar landscape,
as seen through this telescope was apparently to Herschel a
greenish brown but baltic rock, and he also saw that
it was covered with dark red flowers very similar to poppies. This,

(10:07):
the article claimed, was quote the first organic production of
nature in a foreign world ever revealed to the eyes
of men. He also recorded a lunar forest which was
said to resemble really large yew trees, and the astronomer
observed that as the moon shifted positions, this was followed

(10:27):
by a green plane and then a forest of fir trees,
and after adjusting the telescope's magnification. Herschel and his assistant
realized that they had also found a body of water
with beautiful beaches that were full of white sand bordered
by these green marble rocks. The water appeared to be blue,
just like it does on Earth, and also seemed to
experience tides. YEAH talks at length about where they could

(10:50):
see that the tides had hit the rocks on the
edge of one side of this body of water. So,
according to the information that doctor Grant shared with the
New York Sun, the landscape observations that Dr Herschel and
his team were doing went on for almost two hours,
and then after adjusting the lenses of the telescope once more,

(11:11):
there are often references throughout all of these these UH
articles of how they adjusted lenses and switched things out. UH.
Then they observed various crystalline structures in the landscape, and
then a herd of quadrupeds was spotted. So this herd
of creatures was reported to be in the shade of

(11:32):
the forest, and the animals appeared to be a lot
like small bison, although very much smaller than any bison
on Earth. These creatures had a lot of characteristics that
were similar to terrestrial bison. There were quote semicircular horns,
the hump on its shoulders, and the depth of its
dew lap, and the length of its shaggy hair. He

(11:54):
also described the species is having quote a remarkable fleshy
appendage over the eyes which spanned across the head from
ear to ear. So, according to this account, Herschel is
said to have guessed that this flap covering the eyes
would shield the animal from the extreme variations in light
and darkness that the Moon would experience. Next in his

(12:17):
Moon's wildlife discoveries were creatures that the article suspects would
be classified as monsters on Earth. These were small, goat
sized species that were the color of quote bluish lead.
Males had single horns and beards, and female had neither
horns nor beards, but did have longer tails than the
males did. They frolicked around like antelopes, and they were

(12:40):
very social creatures, and their antics, according to this report
were quite delightful. Yeah. It goes on at length about
how they were jumping around and playing with each other,
and how all of the astronomers observing this just were
charmed to pieces. They were charmed by the delightful monsters
by a delightful goat, unicorn creatures that were blue. Uh.

(13:04):
There were also water birds aspied through this telescope, including
pelicans and cranes being the most common. Uh. These birds
were discovered along a branching river, and the astronomers watched
this river for some time, hoping to get their eyes
on what they suspected might be lunar fish, but they
were not rewarded. But they did deduce that the fish

(13:26):
must have been there because the birds were seen dunking
their heads in the water, seemingly as a food gathering activity.
At this point in the observations, the lunar atmosphere, not
Earth's atmosphere, became too cloudy for them to be able
to see any further, and so the observers decided to
take a break. They were also pretty tired by that point.
So that ended the second installment of the New York

(13:48):
Suns series with kind of a cliffhanger. Yeah, at this
point they've introduced crazy animal species that have been seen
on the Moon. Uh, but there is how much more
to come? So on Thursday, August thirty five, the third
installment of the Moon Discovery series was published. The cloudy

(14:08):
conditions that had halted their viewings for a couple of
nights cleared up on January thirteenth, and at that point
both the Moon's atmosphere and the Earth's were clear quote
one of pearly purity and loveliness, and as the position
of the Moon relative to the telescope's location was getting
ready to shift, Dr Grant wrote that Dr Herschel wanted

(14:30):
to focus the entirety of the evening on January to
just a few specific spots before that shift happened. Uh.
There is uh at this point in the narrative additional
topographical descriptions of the Moon's landscape, and these go on
and on for quite some length to detail there are mountains,
their mountains made of crystal. They're active and inactive volcanoes.

(14:54):
There are incredibly fertile areas. At one point this third
installment describes it as quote fertile to excess in one passage.
So it goes on a lot about the landscape. Additional
animals were identified as being different from the ones that
had been sited on earlier viewings, including larger versions of

(15:15):
those bison creatures, as well as numerous flocks of red
and white birds. Herschel and his team, according to this article,
classified thirty eight different species of lunar forest trees that night,
and twice that number of plants in the relatively small
area where they were concentrating their observations. They also cataloged

(15:37):
nine mammal species and five over paris species. The mammals
included beasts that look like little reindeer, as well as
elk and moose and horned bears, and one that looked
like a biped beaver, although apparently the moon beavers had
no tails, so the moon beaver gets talked about a lot.
It was very exciting, and it also, again being biped,

(16:01):
carried its young cradled in its arms the same way
that a human would as it was tootling around on
its hind legs. And these lunar beavers also constructed huts
rather than damns, so they're a little more archaeological or
architecturally advanced, and this construction was described as quote better
and higher than those of many tribes of human savages,

(16:23):
and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them,
there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the
use of fire. So if if you do have the opportunity,
which I encourage you to take, to listen to the
Memory Palace episode about this. One of my favorite parts
is about these beavers. When you're reading the articles, the
beaver part is just hilarious to me because there's such

(16:46):
excitement over these biped beavers that know how to use fire.
So south of where these beaver type animals were seen
was a dense forest where the only animal scene was
this large stork like bird. Not far from the thickly
wooded area was the largest lake that was visible, which
was estimated to be a hundred ninety eight by two

(17:07):
d and sixty six miles or three nineteen by four kilometers.
The lake reportedly contained volcanic islands. And before we talk
about a little bit of amazing flora seen on some
of these islands in this lake, do you want to
have a word from a sponsor, sure, back to these
amazing volcanic islands discovered on the Moon. One of the

(17:32):
really fabulous and exciting discoveries there was that there were
moon palm trees. These were visually almost identical to Earth
palm trees, except that they blossomed with bright red flowers,
and they did not appear to bear fruits like date
or coconuts. However, in terms of fruit bearing trees, there

(17:54):
was a melon tree, and there were herds of miniature
zebras and birds that the team thought were as sense.
The shores of this massive body of water were also
filled with shellfish. Uh. And as this third entry in
the series winds down, there is an attempt to describe
the crystal line vista that's surrounding these waters, although the

(18:15):
curvature of the moon and the earth rotation allows for
no visibility that they can identify the end of this
particular segment of landscape. So you may be thinking that
the wonders described up until this point we're really pretty amazing.
But the fourth installment that was printed in the New
York Sun is even more incredible. This one appeared on

(18:37):
Friday August and a lot of people regard it as
the most sensational of the six parts of this cereal.
So again, it starts, as previous entries, with a lengthy
description of the latest landscape that they're observing, which featured
bright red perpendicular mountains and long veins of what the

(18:59):
team cancluded were virgin gold. Uh. They also describe another
quadruped species, and these ones were observed to be white
sheeplike beasts, but with long necks, and the body is
described almost dear like in shape, but with longer front legs.
So as I was trying to visualize this, I was like,
it's a sheep, dear giraffe. Um. But then another group

(19:23):
of animals is described that apparently looked exactly like sheep,
exactly like sheep, no no visible variation at all. Uh,
and they were so obviously sheep, according to Dr Grant's account,
that it made all of the astronomers laugh. And then
Dr Grant's account drops the real bomb. A holy new
creature appeared in the telescope's view, and several groups of

(19:46):
winged creatures descended from a cliff base to land on
an open plane. Sir John Herschel is quoted in the
article is saying, quote, now, gentleman, my theory is against
your proofs, which you have often found a pretty and
bet we have here something worth looking at. I was
confident that if we ever found beings in human shape,

(20:06):
it would be in this longitude, and that they would
be provided by their creator with some extraordinary powers of locomotion.
First exchange for my number D, and so when he
asked for that, exchange for number D that refers to
a lens that Herschel wanted to use two more carefully
examine the scene before him. So adjustments were quickly made

(20:29):
to the telescope and everything was refocused, and the team
then viewed three groups of these beings walking erect and
these new creatures were indeed similar to humans. After more
focusing and more adjustments, these creatures were brought into clear
focus and they appeared to be about four ft or
one point two meters tall. They had copper colored fur

(20:50):
all over their bodies except for on their faces, and
their wings were like bat wings. Their faces were described
as quote a slight improvement upon that of the large orangutan.
It's actually spelled in this as orangutang, which delights me uh.

(21:11):
And they're described as seeming more intelligent than the earth primate,
the orangutan. Yeah uh. These bat people also had beards
and darker hair on their heads than on the rest
of their bodies. One of Herschel's assistants is quoted in
Grant's account as saying, quote, they would look as well
on a parade ground as some of the old Cockney militia.

(21:33):
Herschel and his team observed these beings and what appeared
to be impassioned conversation, just gesturing to one another, just
like human beings would. This species was named by Herschel
as Vespertilio Homo man bats, and the valley where they
lived was named the Ruby Colisseum. The New York Sun

(21:55):
omitted some of the passages from the notes at the
behest of Dr Grant, who apparently felt like those elements
were best shared by Sir Herschel himself. The Sun indicated
that the omitted material does quote contain facts which would
be wholly incredible to readers who do not carefully examine
the principles and capacity of the instrument with which these

(22:17):
marvelous discoveries have been made. The newspaper also indicates that
sort of their editorial opinion that when the entirety of
this work is published by Herschel, it is going to
be quote at once the most sublime in science and
the most intense and general interest that ever issued from
the press. And that is where we now will clihang you.

(22:42):
The second episode of this two Parter is going to
finish off Dr Grant's accounts of what Herschel observed on
the Moon, and then we'll talk about how all of
this was received by the public and by other newspapers
and even by Sir John Herschel himself. Yeah, so there's
plenty more, although we've given you from probably the juiciest
of the actual um fauna discoveries. Uh and now we're

(23:07):
gonna hop over to listener mail. That sounds awesome. So
this is from our listener Ian and uh, he says, Hi,
my name is Ian and I'm a welder who works
in San Diego. So I just wanted to say that
I love your podcast and they get me through my
ten hour shifts pretty nicely. That being said, I was
stoked on downloading your newest one about the Hartford fire.

(23:28):
My dad is a huge circus buff. But when I
got to work, there just happened to be a giant
fire in my welding department today that has shut us
down for the rest of the week. In search sad
face here. Thankfully no one was injured unlike the one
in Hartford, and we'll get back to work in the
next week or so. How much of a chance is
there for you guys to do a podcast on the
history of welding. Uh, my personal side, I would actually

(23:48):
love to do that because it reaches quite far back.
Um and he says, Uh, I mostly just wanted to
read this because it was such a good coincidence. That's
a weird sort of thing to be ready to talk
about a fire and go to work and find a fire,
or to listen to a fire and go to work
and find a fire. Uh. If you would like to
share your crazy coincidences with us, you're welcome to do so.

(24:10):
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(24:54):
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(25:16):
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