The Great Moon Hoax of 1835: A Deep Dive

NARRATOR: The year is 1835. In New York City, the summer heat rises off the cobblestones, mixing with the smell of horse manure and the sharp tang of printer’s ink. It is a city on the make, a place of hustlers and dreamers. And on the corner of Nassau and Spruce Streets, a small, struggling penny paper called 'The New York Sun' is about to print a story that will not only save its circulation but will convince the world that humanity is not alone in the universe.

EXPERT: You have to understand the atmosphere of the 1830s. This was the era of the 'Penny Press.' Before this, newspapers were six cents—expensive, dry, and meant for the wealthy elite. But 'The Sun,' founded by Benjamin Day, sold for a single penny. It was the first mass media, hungry for sensational content to feed the working class. And science? Science was in this beautiful, wild teenage phase. Electricity, steam engines, new planets—people were ready to believe anything was possible.

NARRATOR: Enter Richard Adams Locke. A Cambridge-educated reporter with a sharp wit and a cynical view of the pseudo-science of the day. He decides to write a series of articles, allegedly reprinted from a defunct Scottish scientific journal, detailing the incredible new discoveries of the very real, very famous astronomer Sir John Herschel, who was currently cataloging stars in South Africa.

EXPERT: Locke’s genius was in the details. He didn't just say 'there are aliens.' He started with the technology. The first article, published on August 25th, didn't mention life at all. It was a dry, hyper-technical description of a massive new telescope—twenty-four feet in diameter, weighing seven tons—supposedly built by Herschel. It sounded so authoritative that even scientists were nodding along.

NARRATOR: But on day two, the telescope was trained on the moon. And the streets of New York exploded.

NARRATOR: By the third day, 'The Sun' was selling nearly twenty thousand copies—more than any newspaper on Earth. The crowds gathered outside the office were impassable. Inside the pages, the discoveries were getting stranger. Bipedal beavers that walked on two legs, carried their young in their arms, and lived in huts that smoked from chimneys.

EXPERT: This is where Locke really played on the public's desire for a connection. He described these beavers as knowing the use of fire. That implies intelligence. It implies a soul. Religious leaders began preaching about our 'brothers on the moon.' The scientific optimism was so high that people thought, 'Why not?' If we have steam trains, why can't the moon have beavers?

NARRATOR: But the pièce de résistance came on August 28th. The discovery of the 'Vespertilio-homo.'

NARRATOR: Bat-men. Or as Locke called them, Vespertilio-homo. The article described them flying, bathing in rivers, and engaging in behavior that Locke hinted was—well, let’s say 'uncouth' for Victorian standards. The city was in a frenzy. Yale professors actually traveled to New York, demanding to see the original documents.

EXPERT: And that was the breaking point. Locke couldn't produce the original journals because they didn't exist. He had to end it. So, in the final installment, he wrote that the sun’s rays had passed through the giant telescope’s lens like a burning glass, setting the observatory in South Africa on fire. The machine was destroyed. The observations were over. It was a convenient, if destructive, plot device.

NARRATOR: It took weeks for the truth to fully come out. 'The Sun' eventually admitted it was a fabrication, but they never really apologized. They called it a 'clever pleasantry.' And the public? Surprisingly, they weren't angry. They had been entertained. They had lived for a week in a world where we weren't alone.

EXPERT: The only person who wasn't amused was Sir John Herschel. He was still in South Africa, completely unaware. When he finally found out, he was inundated with letters asking about the bat-men. He later said he was 'haunted by the moon' for the rest of his life.

NARRATOR: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 wasn't just a lie. It was the birth of modern mass media—the realization that people don't just want the news; they want a story. And for one hot week in August, the people of New York looked up at the moon and didn't see a cold, dead rock. They saw unicorns, temples, and the reflection of their own wonder.