Not once in a T


he biggest story of the day – not to mention week, month, year, decade, century or indeed ever – was the discovery of unicorns. On the moon.


Also revealed by the seven-ton telescope of the


world’s leading astronomer, Sir John Herschel, were lunar beavers that strolled about on two legs and, unlike their earthly cousins, had mastered the art of using fire. Best of all were the winged humans, males and voluptuously unclad females, flapping about over the forests, rivers and ravines of the earth’s nearest neighbour. These ‘man-bats’ were so scientifically authentic that they even had a Latin name – Vespertilio- homo. All this must have been true because there were pictures – at least woodcuts – to prove it. Furthermore, it was in the Sun. The New York Sun, that is. Unbeknownst to the


more credulous citizens of North America, April Fool’s Day came late in 1835; that is, the sensational issue did not hit the newsstands until August 25. Probably the creation of editor Richard Adams Locke, the lunar, not to say lunatic, hoax was widely believed; after all, the source it quoted for these highly detailed reports was the learned Edinburgh Journal of Science. Even the doubters were among the fascinated readers who besieged the Sun’s office for copies containing this most bogus of stories and continued to do so on subsequent days when the paper wrote follow-ups. Missionaries pondered over the logistics of distributing bibles to the (presumably literate) flying humanoids. The circulation of the recently launched, downmarket paper soared to well above 19,000 copies, at the time the highest not only in New York but also the world. The earth’s lunar neighbour does seem to


attract the lunatic fringe. Conspiracy theorists denounced the moon landing of 1969 as a fake perpetrated by Stanley Kubrick, who was given the credit of forging the entire event; apparently,


18 | theJournalist


blue moon


Jonathan Sale spots man-bats on the moon in one of the biggest hoaxes in newspaper history


Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was faked so the US could claim to have won the space race. In other words, a hoax in 1835 about man-bats on the moon was accepted as the truth, while an actual event about real men on the moon was dismissed as a hoax. Given the outpouring of fake news today, it is


hard for an April 1 jest to stand out in the same way now as in 1835. Nearly every year, I confidently identify as a made-up yarn what turns out to be a genuine news item, while accepting as fact some fantasy made up by a joker on a newsdesk. It was therefore intriguing to come across The


the director was being blackmailed by the CIA over his Communist brother Raul. (This story first surfaced in a ‘humor.alt’ newsgroup, which the flat-earthers should have spotted as a clue. Plus Kubrick didn’t have a brother named Raul.) A serious (and seriously derided) Fox TV programme, ‘Did we land on the moon?’, answered its question with a short ‘no’ on the grounds that


New York Sun’s glorious sci-fi fib. Being an anniversary obsessive, I contacted the paper to ask how it was going to commemorate the 175th birthday of its hilarious hoax. The Sunny staffers admitted that the anniversary had slipped their minds but instantly made up for this by banging out an editorial (the only one I have ever inspired). This was no apology. It was, as the paper put it in the heading, ‘Correction?’: “It is suggested by a reader” – this meant me, presumably – “that the 175th anniversary of what is called by competing newspapers The Sun’s great moon ‘hoax’ would be an apt moment to issue a long overdue correction. Our correspondent” – that’s me again


A hoaxer’s guide to the moon


In its two years of existence, The New York Sun had never published anything like it. Nor had any other newspaper paper in the world – or indeed elsewhere in this solar system or in fact any other where alien life-forms gather to pour over the first editions of the daily papers. On newsdesks all over the Crab Nebula, they still talk reverently of what became known in this and other galaxies as the Great Moon Hoax on Mother Earth.


August 1835 editions of the


New York Sun were full of what were claimed to be exclusive extracts from a scientific magazine with convincing state-of-the-art woodcuts of lunar life. Some 19th-century thinkers,


such as Rev Thomas Dick, held that the universe contained trillions of inhabitants, 14 billion (give or take) of them on the moon, all owing their existence, of course, to the Christian God. The trouble was that no one


had seen these god-fearing moonies. Then the British astronomer


Sir John Herschel invested in a new telescope with, according to The New York Sun, a 42,000x magnification. What he saw in the eyepiece was literally out of this world: talking ‘man-bats’ and beavers that had discovered fire. Or was the newspaper just taking the mick out of Thomas Dick? And where was Sir John when he was needed to verify his quotes?


SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY


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