Case file · Sighting
The Great Moon Hoax
In August 1835 the New York Sun printed a series claiming the astronomer John Herschel, then working at the Cape of Good Hope, had seen bat-winged humans and other life on the Moon.
1835 CE · -33.98, 18.47 · status: hoax
The account
The articles claimed to be reprinted from an Edinburgh journal and described a giant telescope at Herschel's Cape observatory. Herschel was in fact observing the southern sky from his house at Feldhausen in Claremont, far from any newspaper, and learned of the story later. The series boosted the Sun's sales enormously.
The sceptical view
It was satire or a circulation stunt, usually attributed to the Sun's reporter Richard Adams Locke.