April 8, 2024 • 25 mins
In this riveting episode of Beggar's Belief, join your hosts, Mellie and Chris, as they dive deep into a peculiar tale that set the world aflutter with tales of lunar discoveries, including 'man-bats' and more.
Step back to 1835 with us and revisit the series of shocking articles published by The Sun newspaper. The supposedly groundbreaking discoveries, attributed to the fantastic telescope said to be used by astronomer Sir John Herschell stirred up a whirlwind of international excitement and curiosity.
The rabbit hole for this tale goes to some strange places, from Edgar Allen Poe to scholars at Yale. Examine the facts, separate truth from fiction, and try to work out what could be real or a lie
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Mellie. I'm Chris. And this is Beggar's Belief, home of hoaxes,
pranks, scams, shams, and scar charlatans.
Wah-dip-a-dat-dip-dip-dip-dat.
And scatting.
Who needs intro music? I got us. You got us. You got us.
Music.
(00:43):
How do you feel about the moon i kind of like it like i like to look up at it
sometimes sometimes it makes me feel infinitesimally small and i don't like
looking at it then but i like that it's out there popular with werewolves yeah
yeah the lupine community really really appreciates It's that stellar body it has.
Yeah, yeah. On again, off again relationship with the tides,
(01:04):
though. Oh, fair enough. Yeah.
And fester atoms. Yeah. So once again, we are going to do this where I present
a story that you have to throw yourself into the midst of.
And you see if you can figure out what is true and what was the lie.
This is going to be a rather long story, by the way. All right.
Because I have opinions on moon landing, but I don't think we're going there.
(01:28):
No, no, no, no, no. This is 150 years before someone had to,
like, punch Neil Armstrong. Yeah, this is...
Taking the way back machine. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sherman and Mr.
Peabody style. This is exceptionally old-timey. So the year is 1835. All right.
Yes, yes. But this is not 1921. No. No Wang Wang Blues yet.
You live in New York City. Okay. And you pick up your daily paper,
(01:50):
which happens to be the sun.
Oh, we're talking about the moon.
Yes, we are. All right. You're reading about the moon in the sun. Yes.
Okay. And you see this article saying that they're a famous astronomer by the
name of Sir John Herschel.
And it says, publishes a series of articles written by his assistant, Dr.
Grant, about discoveries observed on the moon. The article states this is a
(02:11):
reprint, that this is actually of the original, which was printed in the Edinburgh Journal of Science.
The articles are printed over the course of six days as you pick up your daily
paper, which we may find out later was more difficult than you'd think.
Saying, we have the happiness of making known to the whole civilized world recent
discoveries, which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we
(02:33):
live, and confer upon the present generation a proud distinction throughout
future time. You have my attention.
I am reading my paper right now. I am digging into this headlock.
Yes, it's exceptionally old-timey. So the first day's description,
fairly dry, about Herschel had developed a massive telescope and had it transported
to Cape Town in South Africa. The next day ramps up details.
(02:55):
They slowly discovered the geology of the moon up close and the description
of the plant life they discovered there. Of course.
Yes. Yeah. Everything is described in detail like it is heavenly,
more gorgeous and perfect than anything on Earth.
Like manna from the moon. Yes. Yes. They looked at the ocean.
The ocean yeah on the moon and saw fairer
(03:17):
shores never angels coasted on a tour of pleasure a beach
of brilliant white sand girt with wild castellated
rocks apparently of marble moving along our screen until we were speechless
with admiration okay there's a long science there are giant pyramids that they
thought at first were man-made but then realized they were just massive,
(03:39):
perfect amethyst crystals.
There's an island that was about three miles long, made of pure sapphire.
And then they just found veins of gold jutting up everywhere.
How many telescope glimpses do you think it took before colonialism entered their mind?
We'll get to that. All right. Yes. Space colonialism.
(04:00):
Readers were hooked for the next article when they described the animals that they found on the moon.
Bisons with brow ridges A blue unicorn goat Perfectly spherical fish And beavers
that walked upright and lived in huts with chimneys that billowed smoke I think
they have ghosts in their blood and they've been doing cocaine about it The next day, however,
(04:25):
Herschel finally said in this article Now, gentlemen, we have here something
worth looking at Because apparently none of the rest of it
The unicorn goats, not worth it.
Not worth it. The massive amethyst crystals.
Sentient beavers, not worth it yet. Yes. Finally, they then announced the discovery
of creatures close to human on the moon.
(04:48):
Flying humans with bat wings. They named them Vespiritillo Homo, meaning man-bat.
Yep. Four feet tall, copper hair, and in an inexplicable dig towards lower-class
Londoners, The face was a slight improvement upon that of the orangutan.
Lieutenant Drummond said that
they would look well on a parade ground as a part of the Cockney militia.
(05:12):
Okay. Okay. If you've got up a little somebody, I guess.
So they could even tell the disposition of the man-bats, who are described as
idyllic, happily, and openly mating.
I hate that we lost this incredible telescopic technology to Ty.
Oh, there is a story about that. Okay.
(05:34):
After this, next day, they found huge buildings and cathedrals.
And this is actually when they lost the telescope because the next day reports,
that they didn't cover the telescope lens properly and the lens caused a fire.
Oh, like it does. Yes, and burnt down the building. So what do you think is
real and what's fake there?
I believe newspapers existed in the 1800s.
(05:59):
The moon's real. There are people around who disagree with you on that one.
Tell me about it. Also, those same people, if the earth is flat as you claim
it is, why haven't cats pushed everything off of it?
Yeah, there you go. Science. No, I think this is dope.
This has to be like, this has to have been drumming up, not like some sort of like, I don't know.
(06:21):
These are like penny novelty stories that somebody was drumming up for science
fiction at the time. And this sounds like a great way to, like,
get interest in your ads and your publishing magazines to go,
oh, wait, I read about this in the newspaper.
Look, there's this great fictional story over here. Oh, you are more right than you realize.
All right. Only it's far weirder than that.
(06:44):
Please educate me. Okay. So there is one thing about this was 100% true.
The very first sentence I said. So John Herschel was indeed an astronomer in
1895. In fact, he was a very well-known astronomer, probably the best known of his generation.
He came from a family of astronomers and was the only person who could walk
up to you and say with a straight face, My daddy discovered Uranus.
(07:08):
Usually straights don't say that.
There's nothing straight-faced about that. But I'll give him that one.
Fair enough. Yeah. He was Cambridge-educated, was one of the founders of the
Royal Astronomical Society.
In his work, he identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus.
He also studied botany, invented the blueprint, and investigated colorblindness.
(07:29):
And other than using his name, he had jack shit to do with the article mentioned.
I was going to say, because I don't think... Typically, the people that I do
know who study botany, no one has stopped me and gone, you know what the next step is?
Lunar botany. Yes. Lunar bison. Lunar bison. Yes. Yeah. He never had an assistant named Dr. Grant.
(07:52):
And actually didn't find out about this article until months after it was published.
I wish I could have been there when he did. So the articles were bullied by
a huge number of people, and it's important to have a little bit of context why.
Why new york in 1835 dirty crowded closer
to that old movie gangs of new york old movie i mean fair enough fair enough
come on we're old we're elder millennial as i wing closer to the mic yeah come
(08:16):
on neither of us have good hip between us just a few years earlier there had
been riots because they started making people pen up their hogs instead of making
them rolled from the streets.
(08:56):
Yeah, fair enough. about Halley's Comet that are happening, but there's also
a lot of people going out and buying a telescope for the first time to see it,
learning about astronomy for the first time.
So it's tying into a lot of interests that your average person...
Would be dabbling in slightly. Also, I'm not quite sure that we had the appropriate
sun filters for telescopes yet, so I imagine there are quite a few people who went, I can see a star!
(09:18):
The article was really well written. I mean, honestly, that's the other thing
that kind of ticked me off, too, that Herschel was not involved with this.
I don't think most astronomers who were into scientific writing at the time
would concoct into what is appearing in that paper. Yeah, yeah.
Article, very well written.
(09:39):
Was paced to draw people in and create a suspension of disbelief.
The first day was just a description of this telescope, how it was produced,
written very dry, scientific by the numbers.
For instance, it was described as being a hydro-oxygen microscope, which means nothing.
The lens was said to be 24 feet across and had a magnifying power of 42,000
(10:04):
times and and weighed nearly seven tons after being polished.
What was the pre-polish? You know, it doesn't say. It doesn't say.
Bullshit. The scope was said to be able to reveal objects in our lunar satellite,
of little more than 18 inches in diameter, which still would not be true with that magnification.
(10:25):
All of these images would then be projected on a screen in real time,
which I thought was really interesting because there's no concept of movies.
So it's more like a camera obscura sort of thing.
Also, that in itself would really attract a lot of intrigue at the era.
The fake telescope was supposedly backed by the Royal Society who got funding from King William IV.
(10:49):
Somehow, the lens only took a week to make. Herschel was supposedly coming up
with these brilliant plans on how to make it that made other people like,
my God, why has no one ever thought of that before?
You know, this is such a simple solution that has solved everything.
What if we curve the glass?
Man, it kind of sounds so much better than that flat glass.
(11:09):
The article claimed this was going to be set up in Cape Town in South Africa
because it is nighttime there during the day in England.
Cape Town is only two hours off of Greenwich Mean Time.
So I'm not quite sure why they thought that claim would work.
Herschel's fake setup sounds like a party being described as aided by several
(11:32):
companies of Dutch boor. he proceeded at once to the erection of his gigantic fabric.
I'm going to let that sentence swish around in my head for a bit while you continue.
Yeah, no problem. Making the article seem more believable, on the second day,
they actually issued a correction.
Oh, sorry. I thought they were going to issue an erection. No,
no, no, no. The erection was issued the first day. It was actually $70,000,
(11:53):
but it was listed as pounds.
Manculpa, man, Maxima Culpa, yeah. So when the story built up,
it got bigger. people had already were primed to believe it.
By the first day of publication, The Sun was the most widely circulated periodical
outselling the Times of London.
The presses were running 10 hours a day. There were rumors of reprints and people
(12:14):
stood in line outside the office for hours to try to get a paper.
While they were there, a well-dressed British man came and chatted with them,
saying he was really happy the word was out and he could talk about this because
he was part of the company company that had shipped this telescope.
I don't know if this guy was actually involved in it or just jumped on the cloud,
but it also added to the belief.
(12:36):
Look, this is present day akin to a midnight release of a Twilight book.
And some dude in the store comes out and goes, I am so glad I can talk about
the time that I played baseball with the Cullen.
So the Sun later published special pamphlet editions, compiling all the articles,
and it sold 60,000 copies for 13 cents each, which would be $4.50 today for just a little pamphlet.
(13:02):
Newspapers all over the world are reprinting these articles.
When the belief was at its height, there were discussions by scientists at Yale.
They actually had advertisements like, let's get together and discuss this.
And after this, they actually showed up at the Sun's office asking for firsthand
reports so that they could better investigate it than what they're getting from the newspaper.
(13:22):
The funny thing was that the Sun's response was, well, we're just reprinting this article.
We don't have the first source. That's from the Edinburgh Scientific Journal.
You'll have to go to them.
It was only much later that anyone realized the Edinburgh Scientific Journal
had been out of print for like years.
See, this is a wonderful case in point for why I miss widespread print media so much.
(13:46):
You shouldn't. This is terrible. No, no, no. Just the fascination of getting
a group so invested in a subject to this degree.
You just can't do this anymore because things are so instantaneous.
I do like being able to fact check sources so very quickly and rapidly with actual experts.
But wait, like, Wikipedia shipping to your door and showing up with something
(14:08):
like this in, like, 1992?
But this one was around then, too. Yeah, so it was the moon.
Oh, yeah, it was. Both of them were pretty round. That pun was on me.
Man, what the hell was wrong with me? No sphere. That's fair. Two spheres.
Quote said, everyone was saying,
have you read the accounts of Sir John Herschel's wonderful discovery?
(14:30):
Have you read the sun? Have you heard the news of the man in the moon?
These were the questions you met everywhere.
It was the absorbing topic of the day. No one expressed or entertained a doubt
as to the truth of the story. Now, honestly, that should have been a misprint.
Because it's not the man in the moon. It's the Batman in the moon. Na-na-na-na-na-na.
Missionary trips, as you... To the moon? Yeah. Starting to be planned.
(14:50):
There were fundraisers, including one in the Exeter Hall in London.
Oh, well, the first thing is how do we get religion to the Bat People? Yes. Yes.
Nobody questioned anything until the Man Bad article.
First, like, three days, nobody questioned it at all. A few of the newspapers
reprinting the articles had disclaimers on it after that.
(15:11):
Finally, it broke. It was a hoax. The Journal of Commerce officially published
that it was a fraud on August 30th. Then they pointed out that it was a probable
offer was Richard Adam Locke.
Locke was born in Britain and claimed to be descended from one of my favorite
historical figures, John Locke. Yes, I was going to add.
Claimed to, I mean. Claimed to. Yes. He worked for the London Republican before moving to New York.
(15:35):
His biggest story was covering the case of Robert Mattius, also known as Matthias
the Prophet, who claimed to be Jesus and then killed one of his followers.
Listen, I have very good sources that this is explicitly true.
My source was a unicorn goat in the middle. but i
heard it from the whole shook on it so lock
apparently as you guessed created the hoax to drive sales
(15:58):
when he was outed as the author he were he published a rebuttal saying emoji
here i don't know you just look at my ceiling the answer is gonna be i'm looking
at the mood now no you're looking at my upstairs name as unequivocally as the
words can express it i did not make those discoveries.
(16:18):
Totally pulled it, wasn't me. That's very Bill Clinton-ish. Wasn't me, wasn't me.
That only drove more sales. And The Sun starts publishing back and forth between
supporters and detractors in order to drive sales.
The Sun stated it wouldn't redact the articles until we have the testimony of
the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a direct decoration.
(16:40):
In the meanwhile, let every reader of the account examine it and enjoy his own opinion.
This is also when And I said, the Edinburgh Scientific Journal that they claimed
it was from, long since out of print.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. Other papers started publishing parodies.
Things like fake real estate listings for lunar properties.
There are tons of artwork of the lunar properties and creatures on the moon.
(17:03):
This is long before the concept of journalistic integrity. I love the establishment
of fan fiction that occurred with this. This is wild.
This is like AO3 of their time. This is incredible. incredible funny you should
say fan fiction okay really good timing actually.
No one was upset as anyone else as Edgar Allan Poe. Of course it would be Poe.
(17:28):
In June of that year, he had started publishing a story called Hands Fall a
Tale, which was about a balloon trip to and from the moon.
It was written as a series of letters with an unreliable narrator.
Poe claimed he wanted it to be viewed as a true account and had spoken with
a lot of other people about this idea. He said the only difference between his
story and the published one is one of us in tone of banter, the other one in downright earnest.
(17:51):
He also claimed that he knew that he was the only one that knew the moon hooks
was fake from the get go and couldn't believe that others believed it.
I'm too smart. There's a terrible sign here. X, actually. He was quoted as saying
that one person in 10 discredited it.
And strangest of all the doubters were chiefly among those who doubted it without
being able to say why. A great professor of mathematics in a Virginian college
(18:15):
told me seriously that he had no doubt about the truth of the whole affair.
If I believe in imaginary numbers, Mr. Poe, I can believe in goat unicorns on the moon. Thank you.
Pandas! I deal with fee every day. What's a little sentient goat beaver?
So much later, Poe rescinded his claims that he was plagiarized.
(18:38):
But I actually think there might be some credit to this because there's reports
that one of Poe's editors at the time, Richard Adams Locke, regardless,
the Sun went on to publish Poe's story, The Balloon Hoax.
So, yeah. Who's the real Andre Love?
So as far as Herschel goes, you have to feel bad for him. I do?
(19:00):
Yes. Yes. He's actually working in South Africa at the time that this all went
down, almost coincidentally from the story.
Didn't find out about it until months later. His wife was at home and gets inundated
with all of these letters.
And she later said, the whole description is so well clenched with minute details
and names that the New Yorkists were not to be blamed for actually believing
(19:21):
it. It's a great pity it's not true. True.
I love the idea of her getting inundated with these communications about this
story and having to go to her husband
and say, dear, I thought you were an astronomer, not an astrologer.
I just like that people apparently called him New Yorkists back then.
Bring it back. We need to bring it back. Honestly. I think you'd get punched.
(19:44):
They'd punch me anyway. Yeah, it's true. It's New York. I lied.
The last time I was in New York, I had my mom with me and everybody was very
nice to her. It was wonderful and great.
That's why I think we should bring it back. I think we should bring it together. Yeah, New York is.
Herschel himself, nowhere near as well-funded as his fictional counterpart.
Most of his research was self-funded and his actual South African research base
(20:07):
was staffed by one handyman.
So they're overcompensating for the telescope size yeah
yeah that's the only fallacy in
this story he comes back home and finds out that he had gained fame for something
he had nothing to do and earned a beef with edgar allen poe i love that this
is also the tmc of the time yeah this is like i just wouldn't want to piss off
(20:29):
edgar allen poe no the cast of amontillado and and And the Pit and Pendulum.
He's not somebody who you want to have a grudge. No.
Unless you want to, like, feed him some alcohol and leave him on a side street
in a ditch somewhere overnight.
Sorry to all you Poe fanatics out there. I happen to be one.
(20:49):
So Herschel, haunted by his story for years because it surpassed his actual research.
He was quoted as saying, I've been pestered from all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon.
In English, French, Italian, and German. Wait, it surpassed all of his research?
Yes. Don't say. You don't say. He wasn't at the level of discovering biodiversity on the moon?
(21:11):
No. Not quite there yet. No, not there. Get a better telescope.
Yeah. Story had long-term effects.
A while later, Sun published an article about a massive New York fire that actually happened.
And where other papers reprinted it, they actually put a disclaimer. This is from the hot sun.
Yikes. Four years later, astronomical discoveries actually have little mentions
(21:34):
of the moon hoax, basically telling people, be careful what you believe.
It's funny, like, for a generation, when you actually search for the great moon
hoax, it comes up for 50 years that people are still, yeah.
But it also earned a lot of respect for being well-written. P.T.
Barnum stated Locke's work was the most stupendous scientific imposition upon
(21:54):
the public in the generation which we are numbered has known.
I mean, it's also interesting with the parallel of over a hundred years later,
you get something similar in the radio play, essentially, of The Worlds.
Like, you get this whole phenomena again with a new medium.
Yeah. So when do you think that,
how long do you think it took the Sun to actually post a redaction? Yeah.
(22:18):
I'm going to say 20, no, redacties from The Sun actually providing a redaction. 1995.
They never did. Of course. And they never actually verified it was Locke who wrote it. Yeah.
It's one of those well-known never verified by him or The Sun.
They kept it under Locke and Key.
(22:39):
So in 2010, it was the 175th anniversary, and they officially stated,
For the moment, let us say that we are aware of the claim that there are no
lunar man-bats, neither on the moon or here.
Rest assured, we're still looking into it.
Telescopes. And that is the story of the Great Moon Hoax. That was not where
(23:01):
I was expecting that to go.
I had no idea that this was a thing. I know of the sun's existence.
I enjoyed the sun as a publication a lot as a child in my grandparents' convenience store.
I'm a ginger. I don't enjoy the sun. I just burn. Fair enough.
I mean, like, to be fair, Herschel got burned, too.
But yeah, just the fact that this can persist for so long, this publication
(23:23):
still exists, and it is for entertainment purposes only.
But so many people take this at face value.
You they just see this because i guess the other thing
too is just the power of seeing print media
is you see something like that stacked next
to things like the times like the new yorker and all but at
the time the sun was more everyman news it was still news but this is before
(23:47):
there was any kind of journalism as we know it didn't exist it was kind of on
good faith that you're not lying which is why when you read a lot of articles
back then it's it's what's going to sell the paper so So stuff was dramatized,
and you kind of have to be careful of it.
Which hasn't really changed much, honestly, unfortunately.
They've gotten louder. Okay, it's changed for the worse. It's changed for the worse.
(24:12):
But yeah, yeah. Oh, the sun.
Vibrant, hot, flashing, big stars. Lately full of flares. Lots of flares.
That's great. I have a lot of flare-ups these days, too. They're not fun.
Yeah, yeah. Elder millennial. Yeah, Elder Monolio. I wasn't there when this was written, but close.
(24:33):
I do know a Batboy. I was there when that magic was written.
All right. Yeah. So that's that. That's that.
This is Beggar's Belief. And from this side of the microphone,
don't believe everything you hear.
Music.
I'm Mellie. I'm Chris. And this is Beggar's Belief, home of hoaxes,
pranks, scams, shams, and scar charlatans.
Wah-dip-a-dat-dip-dip-dip-dat.
And scatting.
Who needs intro music? I got us. You got us. You got us.
Music.
(00:43):
How do you feel about the moon i kind of like it like i like to look up at it
sometimes sometimes it makes me feel infinitesimally small and i don't like
looking at it then but i like that it's out there popular with werewolves yeah
yeah the lupine community really really appreciates It's that stellar body it has.
Yeah, yeah. On again, off again relationship with the tides,
(01:04):
though. Oh, fair enough. Yeah.
And fester atoms. Yeah. So once again, we are going to do this where I present
a story that you have to throw yourself into the midst of.
And you see if you can figure out what is true and what was the lie.
This is going to be a rather long story, by the way. All right.
Because I have opinions on moon landing, but I don't think we're going there.
(01:28):
No, no, no, no, no. This is 150 years before someone had to,
like, punch Neil Armstrong. Yeah, this is...
Taking the way back machine. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sherman and Mr.
Peabody style. This is exceptionally old-timey. So the year is 1835. All right.
Yes, yes. But this is not 1921. No. No Wang Wang Blues yet.
You live in New York City. Okay. And you pick up your daily paper,
(01:50):
which happens to be the sun.
Oh, we're talking about the moon.
Yes, we are. All right. You're reading about the moon in the sun. Yes.
Okay. And you see this article saying that they're a famous astronomer by the
name of Sir John Herschel.
And it says, publishes a series of articles written by his assistant, Dr.
Grant, about discoveries observed on the moon. The article states this is a
(02:11):
reprint, that this is actually of the original, which was printed in the Edinburgh Journal of Science.
The articles are printed over the course of six days as you pick up your daily
paper, which we may find out later was more difficult than you'd think.
Saying, we have the happiness of making known to the whole civilized world recent
discoveries, which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we
(02:33):
live, and confer upon the present generation a proud distinction throughout
future time. You have my attention.
I am reading my paper right now. I am digging into this headlock.
Yes, it's exceptionally old-timey. So the first day's description,
fairly dry, about Herschel had developed a massive telescope and had it transported
to Cape Town in South Africa. The next day ramps up details.
(02:55):
They slowly discovered the geology of the moon up close and the description
of the plant life they discovered there. Of course.
Yes. Yeah. Everything is described in detail like it is heavenly,
more gorgeous and perfect than anything on Earth.
Like manna from the moon. Yes. Yes. They looked at the ocean.
The ocean yeah on the moon and saw fairer
(03:17):
shores never angels coasted on a tour of pleasure a beach
of brilliant white sand girt with wild castellated
rocks apparently of marble moving along our screen until we were speechless
with admiration okay there's a long science there are giant pyramids that they
thought at first were man-made but then realized they were just massive,
(03:39):
perfect amethyst crystals.
There's an island that was about three miles long, made of pure sapphire.
And then they just found veins of gold jutting up everywhere.
How many telescope glimpses do you think it took before colonialism entered their mind?
We'll get to that. All right. Yes. Space colonialism.
(04:00):
Readers were hooked for the next article when they described the animals that they found on the moon.
Bisons with brow ridges A blue unicorn goat Perfectly spherical fish And beavers
that walked upright and lived in huts with chimneys that billowed smoke I think
they have ghosts in their blood and they've been doing cocaine about it The next day, however,
(04:25):
Herschel finally said in this article Now, gentlemen, we have here something
worth looking at Because apparently none of the rest of it
The unicorn goats, not worth it.
Not worth it. The massive amethyst crystals.
Sentient beavers, not worth it yet. Yes. Finally, they then announced the discovery
of creatures close to human on the moon.
(04:48):
Flying humans with bat wings. They named them Vespiritillo Homo, meaning man-bat.
Yep. Four feet tall, copper hair, and in an inexplicable dig towards lower-class
Londoners, The face was a slight improvement upon that of the orangutan.
Lieutenant Drummond said that
they would look well on a parade ground as a part of the Cockney militia.
(05:12):
Okay. Okay. If you've got up a little somebody, I guess.
So they could even tell the disposition of the man-bats, who are described as
idyllic, happily, and openly mating.
I hate that we lost this incredible telescopic technology to Ty.
Oh, there is a story about that. Okay.
(05:34):
After this, next day, they found huge buildings and cathedrals.
And this is actually when they lost the telescope because the next day reports,
that they didn't cover the telescope lens properly and the lens caused a fire.
Oh, like it does. Yes, and burnt down the building. So what do you think is
real and what's fake there?
I believe newspapers existed in the 1800s.
(05:59):
The moon's real. There are people around who disagree with you on that one.
Tell me about it. Also, those same people, if the earth is flat as you claim
it is, why haven't cats pushed everything off of it?
Yeah, there you go. Science. No, I think this is dope.
This has to be like, this has to have been drumming up, not like some sort of like, I don't know.
(06:21):
These are like penny novelty stories that somebody was drumming up for science
fiction at the time. And this sounds like a great way to, like,
get interest in your ads and your publishing magazines to go,
oh, wait, I read about this in the newspaper.
Look, there's this great fictional story over here. Oh, you are more right than you realize.
All right. Only it's far weirder than that.
(06:44):
Please educate me. Okay. So there is one thing about this was 100% true.
The very first sentence I said. So John Herschel was indeed an astronomer in
1895. In fact, he was a very well-known astronomer, probably the best known of his generation.
He came from a family of astronomers and was the only person who could walk
up to you and say with a straight face, My daddy discovered Uranus.
(07:08):
Usually straights don't say that.
There's nothing straight-faced about that. But I'll give him that one.
Fair enough. Yeah. He was Cambridge-educated, was one of the founders of the
Royal Astronomical Society.
In his work, he identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus.
He also studied botany, invented the blueprint, and investigated colorblindness.
(07:29):
And other than using his name, he had jack shit to do with the article mentioned.
I was going to say, because I don't think... Typically, the people that I do
know who study botany, no one has stopped me and gone, you know what the next step is?
Lunar botany. Yes. Lunar bison. Lunar bison. Yes. Yeah. He never had an assistant named Dr. Grant.
(07:52):
And actually didn't find out about this article until months after it was published.
I wish I could have been there when he did. So the articles were bullied by
a huge number of people, and it's important to have a little bit of context why.
Why new york in 1835 dirty crowded closer
to that old movie gangs of new york old movie i mean fair enough fair enough
come on we're old we're elder millennial as i wing closer to the mic yeah come
(08:16):
on neither of us have good hip between us just a few years earlier there had
been riots because they started making people pen up their hogs instead of making
them rolled from the streets.
(08:56):
Yeah, fair enough. about Halley's Comet that are happening, but there's also
a lot of people going out and buying a telescope for the first time to see it,
learning about astronomy for the first time.
So it's tying into a lot of interests that your average person...
Would be dabbling in slightly. Also, I'm not quite sure that we had the appropriate
sun filters for telescopes yet, so I imagine there are quite a few people who went, I can see a star!
(09:18):
The article was really well written. I mean, honestly, that's the other thing
that kind of ticked me off, too, that Herschel was not involved with this.
I don't think most astronomers who were into scientific writing at the time
would concoct into what is appearing in that paper. Yeah, yeah.
Article, very well written.
(09:39):
Was paced to draw people in and create a suspension of disbelief.
The first day was just a description of this telescope, how it was produced,
written very dry, scientific by the numbers.
For instance, it was described as being a hydro-oxygen microscope, which means nothing.
The lens was said to be 24 feet across and had a magnifying power of 42,000
(10:04):
times and and weighed nearly seven tons after being polished.
What was the pre-polish? You know, it doesn't say. It doesn't say.
Bullshit. The scope was said to be able to reveal objects in our lunar satellite,
of little more than 18 inches in diameter, which still would not be true with that magnification.
(10:25):
All of these images would then be projected on a screen in real time,
which I thought was really interesting because there's no concept of movies.
So it's more like a camera obscura sort of thing.
Also, that in itself would really attract a lot of intrigue at the era.
The fake telescope was supposedly backed by the Royal Society who got funding from King William IV.
(10:49):
Somehow, the lens only took a week to make. Herschel was supposedly coming up
with these brilliant plans on how to make it that made other people like,
my God, why has no one ever thought of that before?
You know, this is such a simple solution that has solved everything.
What if we curve the glass?
Man, it kind of sounds so much better than that flat glass.
(11:09):
The article claimed this was going to be set up in Cape Town in South Africa
because it is nighttime there during the day in England.
Cape Town is only two hours off of Greenwich Mean Time.
So I'm not quite sure why they thought that claim would work.
Herschel's fake setup sounds like a party being described as aided by several
(11:32):
companies of Dutch boor. he proceeded at once to the erection of his gigantic fabric.
I'm going to let that sentence swish around in my head for a bit while you continue.
Yeah, no problem. Making the article seem more believable, on the second day,
they actually issued a correction.
Oh, sorry. I thought they were going to issue an erection. No,
no, no, no. The erection was issued the first day. It was actually $70,000,
(11:53):
but it was listed as pounds.
Manculpa, man, Maxima Culpa, yeah. So when the story built up,
it got bigger. people had already were primed to believe it.
By the first day of publication, The Sun was the most widely circulated periodical
outselling the Times of London.
The presses were running 10 hours a day. There were rumors of reprints and people
(12:14):
stood in line outside the office for hours to try to get a paper.
While they were there, a well-dressed British man came and chatted with them,
saying he was really happy the word was out and he could talk about this because
he was part of the company company that had shipped this telescope.
I don't know if this guy was actually involved in it or just jumped on the cloud,
but it also added to the belief.
(12:36):
Look, this is present day akin to a midnight release of a Twilight book.
And some dude in the store comes out and goes, I am so glad I can talk about
the time that I played baseball with the Cullen.
So the Sun later published special pamphlet editions, compiling all the articles,
and it sold 60,000 copies for 13 cents each, which would be $4.50 today for just a little pamphlet.
(13:02):
Newspapers all over the world are reprinting these articles.
When the belief was at its height, there were discussions by scientists at Yale.
They actually had advertisements like, let's get together and discuss this.
And after this, they actually showed up at the Sun's office asking for firsthand
reports so that they could better investigate it than what they're getting from the newspaper.
(13:22):
The funny thing was that the Sun's response was, well, we're just reprinting this article.
We don't have the first source. That's from the Edinburgh Scientific Journal.
You'll have to go to them.
It was only much later that anyone realized the Edinburgh Scientific Journal
had been out of print for like years.
See, this is a wonderful case in point for why I miss widespread print media so much.
(13:46):
You shouldn't. This is terrible. No, no, no. Just the fascination of getting
a group so invested in a subject to this degree.
You just can't do this anymore because things are so instantaneous.
I do like being able to fact check sources so very quickly and rapidly with actual experts.
But wait, like, Wikipedia shipping to your door and showing up with something
(14:08):
like this in, like, 1992?
But this one was around then, too. Yeah, so it was the moon.
Oh, yeah, it was. Both of them were pretty round. That pun was on me.
Man, what the hell was wrong with me? No sphere. That's fair. Two spheres.
Quote said, everyone was saying,
have you read the accounts of Sir John Herschel's wonderful discovery?
(14:30):
Have you read the sun? Have you heard the news of the man in the moon?
These were the questions you met everywhere.
It was the absorbing topic of the day. No one expressed or entertained a doubt
as to the truth of the story. Now, honestly, that should have been a misprint.
Because it's not the man in the moon. It's the Batman in the moon. Na-na-na-na-na-na.
Missionary trips, as you... To the moon? Yeah. Starting to be planned.
(14:50):
There were fundraisers, including one in the Exeter Hall in London.
Oh, well, the first thing is how do we get religion to the Bat People? Yes. Yes.
Nobody questioned anything until the Man Bad article.
First, like, three days, nobody questioned it at all. A few of the newspapers
reprinting the articles had disclaimers on it after that.
(15:11):
Finally, it broke. It was a hoax. The Journal of Commerce officially published
that it was a fraud on August 30th. Then they pointed out that it was a probable
offer was Richard Adam Locke.
Locke was born in Britain and claimed to be descended from one of my favorite
historical figures, John Locke. Yes, I was going to add.
Claimed to, I mean. Claimed to. Yes. He worked for the London Republican before moving to New York.
(15:35):
His biggest story was covering the case of Robert Mattius, also known as Matthias
the Prophet, who claimed to be Jesus and then killed one of his followers.
Listen, I have very good sources that this is explicitly true.
My source was a unicorn goat in the middle. but i
heard it from the whole shook on it so lock
apparently as you guessed created the hoax to drive sales
(15:58):
when he was outed as the author he were he published a rebuttal saying emoji
here i don't know you just look at my ceiling the answer is gonna be i'm looking
at the mood now no you're looking at my upstairs name as unequivocally as the
words can express it i did not make those discoveries.
(16:18):
Totally pulled it, wasn't me. That's very Bill Clinton-ish. Wasn't me, wasn't me.
That only drove more sales. And The Sun starts publishing back and forth between
supporters and detractors in order to drive sales.
The Sun stated it wouldn't redact the articles until we have the testimony of
the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a direct decoration.
(16:40):
In the meanwhile, let every reader of the account examine it and enjoy his own opinion.
This is also when And I said, the Edinburgh Scientific Journal that they claimed
it was from, long since out of print.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. Other papers started publishing parodies.
Things like fake real estate listings for lunar properties.
There are tons of artwork of the lunar properties and creatures on the moon.
(17:03):
This is long before the concept of journalistic integrity. I love the establishment
of fan fiction that occurred with this. This is wild.
This is like AO3 of their time. This is incredible. incredible funny you should
say fan fiction okay really good timing actually.
No one was upset as anyone else as Edgar Allan Poe. Of course it would be Poe.
(17:28):
In June of that year, he had started publishing a story called Hands Fall a
Tale, which was about a balloon trip to and from the moon.
It was written as a series of letters with an unreliable narrator.
Poe claimed he wanted it to be viewed as a true account and had spoken with
a lot of other people about this idea. He said the only difference between his
story and the published one is one of us in tone of banter, the other one in downright earnest.
(17:51):
He also claimed that he knew that he was the only one that knew the moon hooks
was fake from the get go and couldn't believe that others believed it.
I'm too smart. There's a terrible sign here. X, actually. He was quoted as saying
that one person in 10 discredited it.
And strangest of all the doubters were chiefly among those who doubted it without
being able to say why. A great professor of mathematics in a Virginian college
(18:15):
told me seriously that he had no doubt about the truth of the whole affair.
If I believe in imaginary numbers, Mr. Poe, I can believe in goat unicorns on the moon. Thank you.
Pandas! I deal with fee every day. What's a little sentient goat beaver?
So much later, Poe rescinded his claims that he was plagiarized.
(18:38):
But I actually think there might be some credit to this because there's reports
that one of Poe's editors at the time, Richard Adams Locke, regardless,
the Sun went on to publish Poe's story, The Balloon Hoax.
So, yeah. Who's the real Andre Love?
So as far as Herschel goes, you have to feel bad for him. I do?
(19:00):
Yes. Yes. He's actually working in South Africa at the time that this all went
down, almost coincidentally from the story.
Didn't find out about it until months later. His wife was at home and gets inundated
with all of these letters.
And she later said, the whole description is so well clenched with minute details
and names that the New Yorkists were not to be blamed for actually believing
(19:21):
it. It's a great pity it's not true. True.
I love the idea of her getting inundated with these communications about this
story and having to go to her husband
and say, dear, I thought you were an astronomer, not an astrologer.
I just like that people apparently called him New Yorkists back then.
Bring it back. We need to bring it back. Honestly. I think you'd get punched.
(19:44):
They'd punch me anyway. Yeah, it's true. It's New York. I lied.
The last time I was in New York, I had my mom with me and everybody was very
nice to her. It was wonderful and great.
That's why I think we should bring it back. I think we should bring it together. Yeah, New York is.
Herschel himself, nowhere near as well-funded as his fictional counterpart.
Most of his research was self-funded and his actual South African research base
(20:07):
was staffed by one handyman.
So they're overcompensating for the telescope size yeah
yeah that's the only fallacy in
this story he comes back home and finds out that he had gained fame for something
he had nothing to do and earned a beef with edgar allen poe i love that this
is also the tmc of the time yeah this is like i just wouldn't want to piss off
(20:29):
edgar allen poe no the cast of amontillado and and And the Pit and Pendulum.
He's not somebody who you want to have a grudge. No.
Unless you want to, like, feed him some alcohol and leave him on a side street
in a ditch somewhere overnight.
Sorry to all you Poe fanatics out there. I happen to be one.
(20:49):
So Herschel, haunted by his story for years because it surpassed his actual research.
He was quoted as saying, I've been pestered from all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon.
In English, French, Italian, and German. Wait, it surpassed all of his research?
Yes. Don't say. You don't say. He wasn't at the level of discovering biodiversity on the moon?
(21:11):
No. Not quite there yet. No, not there. Get a better telescope.
Yeah. Story had long-term effects.
A while later, Sun published an article about a massive New York fire that actually happened.
And where other papers reprinted it, they actually put a disclaimer. This is from the hot sun.
Yikes. Four years later, astronomical discoveries actually have little mentions
(21:34):
of the moon hoax, basically telling people, be careful what you believe.
It's funny, like, for a generation, when you actually search for the great moon
hoax, it comes up for 50 years that people are still, yeah.
But it also earned a lot of respect for being well-written. P.T.
Barnum stated Locke's work was the most stupendous scientific imposition upon
(21:54):
the public in the generation which we are numbered has known.
I mean, it's also interesting with the parallel of over a hundred years later,
you get something similar in the radio play, essentially, of The Worlds.
Like, you get this whole phenomena again with a new medium.
Yeah. So when do you think that,
how long do you think it took the Sun to actually post a redaction? Yeah.
(22:18):
I'm going to say 20, no, redacties from The Sun actually providing a redaction. 1995.
They never did. Of course. And they never actually verified it was Locke who wrote it. Yeah.
It's one of those well-known never verified by him or The Sun.
They kept it under Locke and Key.
(22:39):
So in 2010, it was the 175th anniversary, and they officially stated,
For the moment, let us say that we are aware of the claim that there are no
lunar man-bats, neither on the moon or here.
Rest assured, we're still looking into it.
Telescopes. And that is the story of the Great Moon Hoax. That was not where
(23:01):
I was expecting that to go.
I had no idea that this was a thing. I know of the sun's existence.
I enjoyed the sun as a publication a lot as a child in my grandparents' convenience store.
I'm a ginger. I don't enjoy the sun. I just burn. Fair enough.
I mean, like, to be fair, Herschel got burned, too.
But yeah, just the fact that this can persist for so long, this publication
(23:23):
still exists, and it is for entertainment purposes only.
But so many people take this at face value.
You they just see this because i guess the other thing
too is just the power of seeing print media
is you see something like that stacked next
to things like the times like the new yorker and all but at
the time the sun was more everyman news it was still news but this is before
(23:47):
there was any kind of journalism as we know it didn't exist it was kind of on
good faith that you're not lying which is why when you read a lot of articles
back then it's it's what's going to sell the paper so So stuff was dramatized,
and you kind of have to be careful of it.
Which hasn't really changed much, honestly, unfortunately.
They've gotten louder. Okay, it's changed for the worse. It's changed for the worse.
(24:12):
But yeah, yeah. Oh, the sun.
Vibrant, hot, flashing, big stars. Lately full of flares. Lots of flares.
That's great. I have a lot of flare-ups these days, too. They're not fun.
Yeah, yeah. Elder millennial. Yeah, Elder Monolio. I wasn't there when this was written, but close.
(24:33):
I do know a Batboy. I was there when that magic was written.
All right. Yeah. So that's that. That's that.
This is Beggar's Belief. And from this side of the microphone,
don't believe everything you hear.
Music.
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