March 19, 2020 • 24 mins
The second part of this offbeat revisit! As the New York Sun's series of astonishing moon discoveries concluded, most people recognized that it was a hoax. But what made people buy into the tall tale in the first place?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, Here is an episode from our ten episode
playlist that we're calling Offbeat History. Yeah, we're adding this
to our our regular publishing schedule as one kind of
big drop all at the same time on March nineteen.
And that is so that you have maybe have a
little bit of extra entertainment options available to you, particularly
(00:23):
if you are self quarantined or sheltering in place. Welcome
to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Polly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson. And today is
(00:44):
the second part of our two part episode on a
series that ran The New York Sun Uh in August
of eight, detailing some incredible and amazing discoveries that have
been made by viewing the lunar surface through a brand
new type of telescope created by Sir John Herschel. It
(01:05):
had discussed at some length bison that had been seen,
Flora goat like unicorns, and in the last chunk that
we talked about before we cliff hung the first episode,
bat people right, and also the bipedal beavers with no
tales that carried their babies around like human babies. Yeah.
(01:28):
I was telling our producer Nol that I want to
start a band called Lunar Beavers because that's funny to me.
I don't have any musical talent, but I'm going to
do it just the same. I figure I can at
least make band t shirts. Right, It's a great idea.
So now we're going to pick up with the fifth
entry in this sixth part series UH, and we will
(01:51):
go on to describe it and the sixth part UH
and what they contain, and then we will talk about
sort of the cultural context of all of this and
how it affected people. The fifth entry in this series
appeared in in the newspaper on Saturday, August twenty nine,
and this one started with the description of three oceans
(02:13):
on the surface of the Moon, which were visible even
with the puniest of telescopes. That also described seven seas
and innumerable smaller bodies of water. Additionally, there were all
manner of outcroppings that the astronomers really started to struggle
to name because there's not really a comparable geography on Earth.
(02:35):
And while they were surveying all of these lunar attributes,
and again this is after they had just this is
the the following session. After they had discovered these bat people, UH,
the astronomers identified an unusual architectural figure in the landscape.
So they paused for a moment and they adjusted their instruments, lenses,
(02:56):
and its settings so that they could take a closer
look at it. What they discovered was a triangle shaped
temple that was made entirely of sapphire or some other
bluestone that closely resembled sapphire. The temple had numerous massive
columns around its outside edges that were estimated to be
six feet or one pot eight meters wide and seventy
(03:17):
ft one tall. These columns were spaced at about twelve
feet or three point seven ms apart. Yeah, and when
we say triangle shaped, what we mean is the footprint
of it was triangle shaped. It wasn't a pyramid. It
was kind of like if you were looking at it
from above, it was a triangle, but it rose like
a column UH in the sum of its parts. And
(03:38):
it was according to Dr Andrew Grant, who you will
recall if you listen to the first part, was the
assistant to UH, Sir John Herschel, who was relaying this
information to UH in Edinburgh. Scientific Journal and sharing these
notes with the press, and he said that this was
quite a beautiful structure. The roof was a golden metal,
(03:59):
and it appeared to mimic the look of flames. And
within the flames, as though it was being consumed by them,
was a sphere that the astronomers have observed that looked
as though it were made of a clouded copper, And
on each of the temple's three corners was a smaller
sphere of what appeared to be the same copper material.
A scroll made from the same metal as the flames
(04:22):
unfurled from the roof over the upper walls of the building,
and the temple was open and airy. There weren't really
any additional walls or are altars um that existed in
addition to all these columns. With the inclusion of the
flame ornamentation on the top, they estimated that it was
almost a hundred feet or thirty meters high. There were
(04:42):
no man, bats, or other humanoid moon beings at the temple,
only birds. And this fifth entry pretty much just describes
this temple uh and then it concludes with speculation about
the meaning of the temple and its flame symbolism. It
asked the question, quote, did they, by this record any
(05:03):
past calamity of their world or predict any future one
of ours. The sixth and final entry in the New
York Sun's Lunar series was printed on Monday, August one. Yes,
so that at this point they've run basically for a week. Uh,
not far from the temple discussed in the fifth entry,
(05:25):
which they referred to as the Veil of the Triads.
The astronomers saw similar beings to their man bats that
they had talked about in the fourth entry, which they
had named Vespertilio homo. These creatures, however, were a lot larger,
and they were lighter colored than the ones that they
had seen in the Ruby Colosseum. Doctor Grant claimed that
(05:46):
these man bats were quote an improved variety of the race.
The team observed these larger man bats eating yellow gourd
like fruits and then sucking the juice from a red
fruit that was sort of tape like a cucumber. Uh.
The astronomers observed these creatures and their group dynamics, and
they noted how polite they seemed to be in terms
(06:08):
of their society, and they're seeming serenity overall. They also
observed eight or nine previously unseen quadruped species, including a
really elegant stag like beast that had a white coat
and black antlers. Grant commented on the way that all
of the beings of the moon seemed to cohabitate peacefully
without any sort of predator prey kind of relationship, which
(06:32):
kind of contradicts the earlier accounts where they decided that
there must be fish in the water because the birds
were diving for them. Yeah, that's not brought up again
at all, um And at this point, uh, they sort
of it's a shorter observational period. They kind of conclude
(06:52):
the day's observation. However, this is not the end of
this sixth entry in the newspaper series. After gawking at
all of this amazing stuff and the more advanced man
bats of the moon, the astronomers wrapped up for the
night by accidentally failing to correctly lower the lens and
place it horizontally. They lowered it, but they left it
(07:13):
in a perpendicular position, and consequently, Uh, the observatory that
Herschel and his team had constructed caught fire because of
the light that continued to reflect in the telescope because
it hadn't been laid down flat. So while the structure
and its contents were saved, there was a massive hole
that had been burned in the reflecting chamber of the observatory,
(07:35):
and that's why everything was abruptly cut short. Of course,
workmen were hired for a rush repair job, according to
this account by Grant, and within a week, the telescope
and its supporting elements were once again fit to do
their work. But unfortunately, at that point the moon had
moved out of observable position and it wouldn't come back
(07:56):
again for a bit. What follows is a whole section
where the telescope was then turned to Saturn and its rings,
and the account detailed various things about that celestial body
rather than the moon, UH, which is all a very
fascinating read, but we're going to keep focused to the
moon stuff for UH for this UH. And by the
time the moon had moved back into an observable position UH,
(08:20):
Grants notes indicated that Herschel was still really deep in
his Saturn studies, so that he couldn't quite refocus back
to the Moon yet. But doctor Grant and the other
two assistants that were there did decide to take another
peak at the moon, and at this point the three
found an even more beautiful group of Vespertilio homo, which
seemed to have a ceremonial social structure which was similar
(08:42):
to what they had seen among the bat people near
the Sapphire Temple, and an even more advanced proclivity for
producing art. But that's where the account of doctor Grant ends.
He said he wished to quote let the first detailed
account of appear in Dr Herschel's authenticated natural History of
(09:04):
this planet, which is so kind of him. Did not
want to steal the spotlight. So, uh, we are going
to talk next about how the world of felt about
all of this moon talk and these amazing and fantastical discoveries.
But before we do, we're going to pause for a
(09:24):
word from a sponsor. Okay, So back to uh the
New York Sun's published accounts based on the notes of
doctor Grant, of the things they had seen on the
Moon as part of Sir John Herschel's expedition. Uh So,
(09:49):
this newspaper series featured a moon filled with lush landscapes
of crystals and poppies, fauna similar to bison unicorn and
sheep and a relatively advanced race of bad people. Uh
so you are probably wondering what on earth did the
public make of all this? And the short answer was
(10:10):
people were really excited. They debated over the veracity of
these reports from the lunar surface. There were lectures given
and open panels to discuss the implications of this new
finding of life on the moon, and other news outlets
started picking up the story even before all of the
installments had been published, so like by the second one,
(10:31):
they began to reprint this and within weeks the tale
of lunar civilization had really kind of traveled around the world.
Uh it's as one outlet picked it up and shared
it with another, etcetera, etcetera. The Sun made a nice
chunk of cash from this hoax. The readership numbers might
have bumped up a little, but the paper also sold
really popular pamphlets about the discoveries, prints of artist renderings
(10:54):
of the various elements that have been described in the series,
and that included the solar temple and the bat people. Yeah,
those images are fantastic. I love them. Um And in
terms of context in the greater cultural landscape, a decade
before the Great Moon Hoax, German professor at Munich University
had published a paper that translates to discovery of many
(11:15):
distinct traces of lunar inhabitants, especially of one of their
colossal buildings. And this one was not intended as a hoax.
That discusses the multicolored patches of the Moon and how
they might relate to gradations, uh how those gradations might
relate to possible different climate zones, different crops, and perhaps
(11:36):
even different cities and man made structures. Just a few
months before The New York Sun ran this story, there
was also an Edgar Allen Post short story that came
out called The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Fall and
that had been published in the Southern Literary Messenger. This
was the story of a man's return to holland that
(11:57):
when he was filled with stories of a balloon advention
or that had taken him to the Moon. This had
been intended, as was the case for satire at the time,
to fool at least some of its readers, but post
story was quickly recognized as fiction by typical readers most
of the time. Further, the Southern Literary Messenger had a
really small circulation, whereas the New York Sun had a
(12:19):
much larger readership. Yeah, some of the numbers that you'll see, uh,
we'd like in the nineteen thousands for distribution. There is
some debate about what the true numbers were and how
much of that was a bump from this story. But
thousands versus a much smaller group that we're reading, uh,
the Southern Literary Messenger. And whether the Hans Fall tale
(12:43):
inspired this lengthy fae scientific series of notes that the
Sun published, We don't know for certain. It's certainly entirely
possible that both were developed independently. But this was a
time when an expedition like Herschel's trip to South Africa,
which was a real thing to observe. Hayley's comment, was
big news, and astronomy and the possibility of life on
(13:05):
other worlds were really sparking the imaginations of the general public.
And in fact, forty years earlier, Sir John Herschel's father,
William Herschel, had published a paper speculating about life on
other planets. So this was a topic that was kind
of rumbling through culture already. The Sun's series had been
really carefully designed to capitalize on all that interest in
(13:28):
space and life on other worlds, and all of that
it was grounded in truth thanks to the use of
Herschel's name and his very well reported trip research trip
to Cape Town. It developed slowly, first establishing all of
the scientific instruments that were being used in the research,
and then it unwound the details of these lunar wonders
(13:48):
bit by bit. And while you will hear and read
if you look at many historians treatment of this different
accounts of really how this kind of UH came out
in terms of numbers of like what proportion of the
population believed it versus what didn't. At least for the
first several installments, it seemed that a lot of people
(14:08):
did believe these claims, or were at least sort of
wanted to believe them enough to think about them of
flora and fauna that were being observed with this amazing
fictional telescope. But the fourth installment, so that's where they
introduced these bat people, UH, went a little too far
past believability for a lot of readers. That kind of
(14:30):
tipped the scale of like, uh, you've gone too far now.
By the time the fifth entry was published. Most of
the other papers had started denouncing the entirety of this
series as a hoax. Richard Adams Lock, a British journalist
who had moved to America, was accused of penning the
faux discovery narrative. Lock had been hired as an editor
(14:50):
of the Sun just two months before this hoax began,
and Locke actually addressed these accusations with a nebulous denial
letter that he wrote of the New York Herald on
August thirty one, so that was the same day that
the last installment of the tale was published in the
New York Sun. And in this letter Locke wrote, quote,
(15:11):
I beg to state, as unequivocally as the words can
express it, that I did not make those discoveries. And
it is my sincere conviction, founded on a careful examination
of the internal evidence of the work in which they
first appeared, that if made at all, they were made
by the great astronomer, to whom all Europe, if not
an incredulous America, will undoubtedly ascribe them. A Philadelphia paper
(15:33):
reprinted Locke's letter along with an advertisement for real estate
auction to sell off newly discovered property identified by Sir
John Herschel, the sale of which could include the native
one horn sheep with the fleshy lid flaps if the
buyer so desired. Yeah. So some people were definitely kind
of picking up the joke and running with it in
their own ways. Uh. And even though at this point
(15:57):
it clearly seemed to all be one big lark and
most people had accepted it as such, there were still
people who believed the accounts. Plus there was this added complication.
Remember we're talking about a hundred and eighty years ago
that in some places the news of the discovery had spread,
but the follow up hoax discussions had not, So they
(16:19):
were only getting the accounts as though they were real.
They had not had any of the follow up talk
that was going on in other papers. Of course, there
was no doctor Andrew Grant who had been traveling and
working with Sir John Herschel. He was completely made up.
But Herschel did exist, and he had been working on
a new telescope, and he did travel to the Cape
(16:41):
of Good Hope in thirty four. It was on that
trip that he made some important observations of Howe's comments.
So that little tiny carnel of truth fueled the fires
of belief as this whole hoax played out, and Edgar
Allen Poe believed that Locke was the author of the
Great Moon Hoax as the serial came to be known.
It certainly wasn't published that way, but later on people
(17:02):
started calling it that, and he suggested that Locke had
actually stolen the Hans Fall idea and reworked it. And
after almost ten years of complaining about this, as though
it had been a slight to him, Poe wrote another
story which was entitled The Balloon Hoax. And this was
about an intensely speedy balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
If I'm remembering correctly, it like took seventy five hours.
(17:24):
And this too was a hoax, apparently inspired by the
Great Moon Hoax, and it ended up being published in
the New York Sun. The Balloon Hoax fooled a lot
more people than the story of Hans Fall, so the
New York Sun never retracted this story. It also never
named the true author, although most historians do believe that
it was Locke. We'll talk about that more in a moment.
(17:46):
While most people and other news publications seemed unbothered by this,
the Sun's primary competitor, The New York Harold declared The
Sun's printing of the series to be quote highly improper, wicked,
and in fact a species of He didn't swindling, but
most people saw it as basically a clever joke. The
(18:06):
reason that most people were willing to let this hoax
go without protests about The Sun's journalistic integrity and the
ethics that they should have upheld sort of stem from
the fact that The New York Sun was a penny paper.
Uh at the time, there were penny papers, and there
were six cent papers, and six cent papers at the
time were aimed at more discerning readers, usually a little
(18:27):
more educated, a little more highbrow, whereas penny papers UH
printed more lurid news. They would print gossip, they would
print crime reports and murder sheets, and they were aimed
at sort of a wider audience. They just weren't considered
on the same level as the six cent papers. I
think this is similar to the divide between the tabloid
format papers and broadsheet papers today. It is, although penny
(18:52):
papers would report real news as well, but they had
sort of that leverage to have a little bit of
wits and and tabloids have basically have definitely broken some
legitimate stories before. Uh, you know, you are the classic
bat boy cover of a you know, a tabloid papers
(19:13):
is what this whole story kind of reminds me of.
And who doesn't love that boy. Uh. We're going to
talk a little bit more about Locke and about Sir
John Herschel in just a moment, but before that, we
are going to have a quick word from a sponsor,
if that's cool with Tracy. Sure. So, Almost five years
(19:40):
after the Great Moon Hoax was published, and after Locke,
who was noted to be kind of a heavy drinker,
was said to have confessed his authorship to various colleagues
in the newspaper industry in various states of intoxication, Locke
actually wrote a letter to the paper New World, and
at this point he had returned to life as a
freelance writer. After he left the Son, he went to
(20:02):
another job at the New Era, but then when he
resigned from that, he went back to freelance. Locke's letter
appeared on the front page of the New World on
May sixteenth of eighteen forty, and in it he said
that he had written the Great Moon hoax, but that
it had not been intended as a hoax. He claimed
that it had been written as satire, intended to skewer
(20:23):
the effect that religion was having on science, which he
believed led to the acceptance of fanciful thinking over solid truth,
and so that would seem to clear the um the
case on whether or not Alack had written it. However,
there is still some debate over whether he could have
even written this series, given the information about astronomy that
(20:44):
can that it contained, and that some people say he
just would not have known. Uh. It is of course
entirely possible that Locke could have consulted with experts, or
that multiple writers worked on these accounts that they put
forward as the work of this fictional uh dr Andrew Grant.
And it's also entirely conceivable that Locke may have learned
(21:05):
enough about astronomy through his own reading. He was apparently
a very well read man and sort of a lifelong
learner that he could have written this piece without assistance.
So it's not an open and shut but most people
still think Locke did do the writing. You may be wondering,
I know I was exactly what Sir John Herschel thought
of all of this, And while all of this work
(21:27):
was going down in the States, Sir John Herschel was
still in South Africa doing actual, legitimate astronomy work. In
late eighteen thirty five, he was given a copy of
the narrative that The Sun had published, which had cited
his work, and his initial reactions seemed to be one
of amusement. He said to have remarked that his own
actual work would probably seem quite dull by comparison once
(21:50):
it was published. So even though the initial reception on
his part was pretty jolly, over time that amusement wore
right off. Uh. Several years down the road, he wrote
a letter to his aunt Caroline Herschel, who was also
an astronomer of some renowned I have been pestered from
all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon in English, French,
(22:13):
Italian and German. As for the Sun, it continued its
circulation until it merged with the New York World Telegram
in nineteen fifty, and that company eventually went under in
nineteen sixty seven. And that's the great Moon hoax, which
I think I did not credit earlier, but our listener
(22:34):
Brian wrote to us and mentioned this a while back,
and it kind of went on my list and I've
been eyeballing it ever since, so I'm glad that this
was the week that I carved out time to do it. Yeah.
I UM, I was actually out of the office while
you were working on this, and you had emailed me
and said that we were going to talk about the
moon hoax, and I was immediately really excited because I
loved that episode of The Memory Palace that you mentioned
(22:56):
at the top of the episode. If you don't listen
to the Memory Palace, it is quite different from what
we do. They are very short episodes. They usually have
some music that goes along with them in the background,
and it's more like a brief story about something that
happened in history. UM. I find them to be very
lovely and charming, and the one on this is particularly
(23:18):
lovely and charming. Yeah. I like to think of it
as it uh like history as art. Yeah podcast. Yeah
there there, it's really really delightfully done. I like it heaps.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this classic.
(23:38):
If you have heard any kind of email address or
maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of
the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly
obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You
can now reach us at history podcast at i heart
radio dot com, and we're all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
(24:01):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuffy miss in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Hey, everybody, Here is an episode from our ten episode
playlist that we're calling Offbeat History. Yeah, we're adding this
to our our regular publishing schedule as one kind of
big drop all at the same time on March nineteen.
And that is so that you have maybe have a
little bit of extra entertainment options available to you, particularly
(00:23):
if you are self quarantined or sheltering in place. Welcome
to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Polly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson. And today is
(00:44):
the second part of our two part episode on a
series that ran The New York Sun Uh in August
of eight, detailing some incredible and amazing discoveries that have
been made by viewing the lunar surface through a brand
new type of telescope created by Sir John Herschel. It
(01:05):
had discussed at some length bison that had been seen,
Flora goat like unicorns, and in the last chunk that
we talked about before we cliff hung the first episode,
bat people right, and also the bipedal beavers with no
tales that carried their babies around like human babies. Yeah.
(01:28):
I was telling our producer Nol that I want to
start a band called Lunar Beavers because that's funny to me.
I don't have any musical talent, but I'm going to
do it just the same. I figure I can at
least make band t shirts. Right, It's a great idea.
So now we're going to pick up with the fifth
entry in this sixth part series UH, and we will
(01:51):
go on to describe it and the sixth part UH
and what they contain, and then we will talk about
sort of the cultural context of all of this and
how it affected people. The fifth entry in this series
appeared in in the newspaper on Saturday, August twenty nine,
and this one started with the description of three oceans
(02:13):
on the surface of the Moon, which were visible even
with the puniest of telescopes. That also described seven seas
and innumerable smaller bodies of water. Additionally, there were all
manner of outcroppings that the astronomers really started to struggle
to name because there's not really a comparable geography on Earth.
(02:35):
And while they were surveying all of these lunar attributes,
and again this is after they had just this is
the the following session. After they had discovered these bat people, UH,
the astronomers identified an unusual architectural figure in the landscape.
So they paused for a moment and they adjusted their instruments, lenses,
(02:56):
and its settings so that they could take a closer
look at it. What they discovered was a triangle shaped
temple that was made entirely of sapphire or some other
bluestone that closely resembled sapphire. The temple had numerous massive
columns around its outside edges that were estimated to be
six feet or one pot eight meters wide and seventy
(03:17):
ft one tall. These columns were spaced at about twelve
feet or three point seven ms apart. Yeah, and when
we say triangle shaped, what we mean is the footprint
of it was triangle shaped. It wasn't a pyramid. It
was kind of like if you were looking at it
from above, it was a triangle, but it rose like
a column UH in the sum of its parts. And
(03:38):
it was according to Dr Andrew Grant, who you will
recall if you listen to the first part, was the
assistant to UH, Sir John Herschel, who was relaying this
information to UH in Edinburgh. Scientific Journal and sharing these
notes with the press, and he said that this was
quite a beautiful structure. The roof was a golden metal,
(03:59):
and it appeared to mimic the look of flames. And
within the flames, as though it was being consumed by them,
was a sphere that the astronomers have observed that looked
as though it were made of a clouded copper, And
on each of the temple's three corners was a smaller
sphere of what appeared to be the same copper material.
A scroll made from the same metal as the flames
(04:22):
unfurled from the roof over the upper walls of the building,
and the temple was open and airy. There weren't really
any additional walls or are altars um that existed in
addition to all these columns. With the inclusion of the
flame ornamentation on the top, they estimated that it was
almost a hundred feet or thirty meters high. There were
(04:42):
no man, bats, or other humanoid moon beings at the temple,
only birds. And this fifth entry pretty much just describes
this temple uh and then it concludes with speculation about
the meaning of the temple and its flame symbolism. It
asked the question, quote, did they, by this record any
(05:03):
past calamity of their world or predict any future one
of ours. The sixth and final entry in the New
York Sun's Lunar series was printed on Monday, August one. Yes,
so that at this point they've run basically for a week. Uh,
not far from the temple discussed in the fifth entry,
(05:25):
which they referred to as the Veil of the Triads.
The astronomers saw similar beings to their man bats that
they had talked about in the fourth entry, which they
had named Vespertilio homo. These creatures, however, were a lot larger,
and they were lighter colored than the ones that they
had seen in the Ruby Colosseum. Doctor Grant claimed that
(05:46):
these man bats were quote an improved variety of the race.
The team observed these larger man bats eating yellow gourd
like fruits and then sucking the juice from a red
fruit that was sort of tape like a cucumber. Uh.
The astronomers observed these creatures and their group dynamics, and
they noted how polite they seemed to be in terms
(06:08):
of their society, and they're seeming serenity overall. They also
observed eight or nine previously unseen quadruped species, including a
really elegant stag like beast that had a white coat
and black antlers. Grant commented on the way that all
of the beings of the moon seemed to cohabitate peacefully
without any sort of predator prey kind of relationship, which
(06:32):
kind of contradicts the earlier accounts where they decided that
there must be fish in the water because the birds
were diving for them. Yeah, that's not brought up again
at all, um And at this point, uh, they sort
of it's a shorter observational period. They kind of conclude
(06:52):
the day's observation. However, this is not the end of
this sixth entry in the newspaper series. After gawking at
all of this amazing stuff and the more advanced man
bats of the moon, the astronomers wrapped up for the
night by accidentally failing to correctly lower the lens and
place it horizontally. They lowered it, but they left it
(07:13):
in a perpendicular position, and consequently, Uh, the observatory that
Herschel and his team had constructed caught fire because of
the light that continued to reflect in the telescope because
it hadn't been laid down flat. So while the structure
and its contents were saved, there was a massive hole
that had been burned in the reflecting chamber of the observatory,
(07:35):
and that's why everything was abruptly cut short. Of course,
workmen were hired for a rush repair job, according to
this account by Grant, and within a week, the telescope
and its supporting elements were once again fit to do
their work. But unfortunately, at that point the moon had
moved out of observable position and it wouldn't come back
(07:56):
again for a bit. What follows is a whole section
where the telescope was then turned to Saturn and its rings,
and the account detailed various things about that celestial body
rather than the moon, UH, which is all a very
fascinating read, but we're going to keep focused to the
moon stuff for UH for this UH. And by the
time the moon had moved back into an observable position UH,
(08:20):
Grants notes indicated that Herschel was still really deep in
his Saturn studies, so that he couldn't quite refocus back
to the Moon yet. But doctor Grant and the other
two assistants that were there did decide to take another
peak at the moon, and at this point the three
found an even more beautiful group of Vespertilio homo, which
seemed to have a ceremonial social structure which was similar
(08:42):
to what they had seen among the bat people near
the Sapphire Temple, and an even more advanced proclivity for
producing art. But that's where the account of doctor Grant ends.
He said he wished to quote let the first detailed
account of appear in Dr Herschel's authenticated natural History of
(09:04):
this planet, which is so kind of him. Did not
want to steal the spotlight. So, uh, we are going
to talk next about how the world of felt about
all of this moon talk and these amazing and fantastical discoveries.
But before we do, we're going to pause for a
(09:24):
word from a sponsor. Okay, So back to uh the
New York Sun's published accounts based on the notes of
doctor Grant, of the things they had seen on the
Moon as part of Sir John Herschel's expedition. Uh So,
(09:49):
this newspaper series featured a moon filled with lush landscapes
of crystals and poppies, fauna similar to bison unicorn and
sheep and a relatively advanced race of bad people. Uh
so you are probably wondering what on earth did the
public make of all this? And the short answer was
(10:10):
people were really excited. They debated over the veracity of
these reports from the lunar surface. There were lectures given
and open panels to discuss the implications of this new
finding of life on the moon, and other news outlets
started picking up the story even before all of the
installments had been published, so like by the second one,
(10:31):
they began to reprint this and within weeks the tale
of lunar civilization had really kind of traveled around the world.
Uh it's as one outlet picked it up and shared
it with another, etcetera, etcetera. The Sun made a nice
chunk of cash from this hoax. The readership numbers might
have bumped up a little, but the paper also sold
really popular pamphlets about the discoveries, prints of artist renderings
(10:54):
of the various elements that have been described in the series,
and that included the solar temple and the bat people. Yeah,
those images are fantastic. I love them. Um And in
terms of context in the greater cultural landscape, a decade
before the Great Moon Hoax, German professor at Munich University
had published a paper that translates to discovery of many
(11:15):
distinct traces of lunar inhabitants, especially of one of their
colossal buildings. And this one was not intended as a hoax.
That discusses the multicolored patches of the Moon and how
they might relate to gradations, uh how those gradations might
relate to possible different climate zones, different crops, and perhaps
(11:36):
even different cities and man made structures. Just a few
months before The New York Sun ran this story, there
was also an Edgar Allen Post short story that came
out called The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Fall and
that had been published in the Southern Literary Messenger. This
was the story of a man's return to holland that
(11:57):
when he was filled with stories of a balloon advention
or that had taken him to the Moon. This had
been intended, as was the case for satire at the time,
to fool at least some of its readers, but post
story was quickly recognized as fiction by typical readers most
of the time. Further, the Southern Literary Messenger had a
really small circulation, whereas the New York Sun had a
(12:19):
much larger readership. Yeah, some of the numbers that you'll see, uh,
we'd like in the nineteen thousands for distribution. There is
some debate about what the true numbers were and how
much of that was a bump from this story. But
thousands versus a much smaller group that we're reading, uh,
the Southern Literary Messenger. And whether the Hans Fall tale
(12:43):
inspired this lengthy fae scientific series of notes that the
Sun published, We don't know for certain. It's certainly entirely
possible that both were developed independently. But this was a
time when an expedition like Herschel's trip to South Africa,
which was a real thing to observe. Hayley's comment, was
big news, and astronomy and the possibility of life on
(13:05):
other worlds were really sparking the imaginations of the general public.
And in fact, forty years earlier, Sir John Herschel's father,
William Herschel, had published a paper speculating about life on
other planets. So this was a topic that was kind
of rumbling through culture already. The Sun's series had been
really carefully designed to capitalize on all that interest in
(13:28):
space and life on other worlds, and all of that
it was grounded in truth thanks to the use of
Herschel's name and his very well reported trip research trip
to Cape Town. It developed slowly, first establishing all of
the scientific instruments that were being used in the research,
and then it unwound the details of these lunar wonders
(13:48):
bit by bit. And while you will hear and read
if you look at many historians treatment of this different
accounts of really how this kind of UH came out
in terms of numbers of like what proportion of the
population believed it versus what didn't. At least for the
first several installments, it seemed that a lot of people
(14:08):
did believe these claims, or were at least sort of
wanted to believe them enough to think about them of
flora and fauna that were being observed with this amazing
fictional telescope. But the fourth installment, so that's where they
introduced these bat people, UH, went a little too far
past believability for a lot of readers. That kind of
(14:30):
tipped the scale of like, uh, you've gone too far now.
By the time the fifth entry was published. Most of
the other papers had started denouncing the entirety of this
series as a hoax. Richard Adams Lock, a British journalist
who had moved to America, was accused of penning the
faux discovery narrative. Lock had been hired as an editor
(14:50):
of the Sun just two months before this hoax began,
and Locke actually addressed these accusations with a nebulous denial
letter that he wrote of the New York Herald on
August thirty one, so that was the same day that
the last installment of the tale was published in the
New York Sun. And in this letter Locke wrote, quote,
(15:11):
I beg to state, as unequivocally as the words can
express it, that I did not make those discoveries. And
it is my sincere conviction, founded on a careful examination
of the internal evidence of the work in which they
first appeared, that if made at all, they were made
by the great astronomer, to whom all Europe, if not
an incredulous America, will undoubtedly ascribe them. A Philadelphia paper
(15:33):
reprinted Locke's letter along with an advertisement for real estate
auction to sell off newly discovered property identified by Sir
John Herschel, the sale of which could include the native
one horn sheep with the fleshy lid flaps if the
buyer so desired. Yeah. So some people were definitely kind
of picking up the joke and running with it in
their own ways. Uh. And even though at this point
(15:57):
it clearly seemed to all be one big lark and
most people had accepted it as such, there were still
people who believed the accounts. Plus there was this added complication.
Remember we're talking about a hundred and eighty years ago
that in some places the news of the discovery had spread,
but the follow up hoax discussions had not, So they
(16:19):
were only getting the accounts as though they were real.
They had not had any of the follow up talk
that was going on in other papers. Of course, there
was no doctor Andrew Grant who had been traveling and
working with Sir John Herschel. He was completely made up.
But Herschel did exist, and he had been working on
a new telescope, and he did travel to the Cape
(16:41):
of Good Hope in thirty four. It was on that
trip that he made some important observations of Howe's comments.
So that little tiny carnel of truth fueled the fires
of belief as this whole hoax played out, and Edgar
Allen Poe believed that Locke was the author of the
Great Moon Hoax as the serial came to be known.
It certainly wasn't published that way, but later on people
(17:02):
started calling it that, and he suggested that Locke had
actually stolen the Hans Fall idea and reworked it. And
after almost ten years of complaining about this, as though
it had been a slight to him, Poe wrote another
story which was entitled The Balloon Hoax. And this was
about an intensely speedy balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
If I'm remembering correctly, it like took seventy five hours.
(17:24):
And this too was a hoax, apparently inspired by the
Great Moon Hoax, and it ended up being published in
the New York Sun. The Balloon Hoax fooled a lot
more people than the story of Hans Fall, so the
New York Sun never retracted this story. It also never
named the true author, although most historians do believe that
it was Locke. We'll talk about that more in a moment.
(17:46):
While most people and other news publications seemed unbothered by this,
the Sun's primary competitor, The New York Harold declared The
Sun's printing of the series to be quote highly improper, wicked,
and in fact a species of He didn't swindling, but
most people saw it as basically a clever joke. The
(18:06):
reason that most people were willing to let this hoax
go without protests about The Sun's journalistic integrity and the
ethics that they should have upheld sort of stem from
the fact that The New York Sun was a penny paper.
Uh at the time, there were penny papers, and there
were six cent papers, and six cent papers at the
time were aimed at more discerning readers, usually a little
(18:27):
more educated, a little more highbrow, whereas penny papers UH
printed more lurid news. They would print gossip, they would
print crime reports and murder sheets, and they were aimed
at sort of a wider audience. They just weren't considered
on the same level as the six cent papers. I
think this is similar to the divide between the tabloid
format papers and broadsheet papers today. It is, although penny
(18:52):
papers would report real news as well, but they had
sort of that leverage to have a little bit of
wits and and tabloids have basically have definitely broken some
legitimate stories before. Uh, you know, you are the classic
bat boy cover of a you know, a tabloid papers
(19:13):
is what this whole story kind of reminds me of.
And who doesn't love that boy. Uh. We're going to
talk a little bit more about Locke and about Sir
John Herschel in just a moment, but before that, we
are going to have a quick word from a sponsor,
if that's cool with Tracy. Sure. So, Almost five years
(19:40):
after the Great Moon Hoax was published, and after Locke,
who was noted to be kind of a heavy drinker,
was said to have confessed his authorship to various colleagues
in the newspaper industry in various states of intoxication, Locke
actually wrote a letter to the paper New World, and
at this point he had returned to life as a
freelance writer. After he left the Son, he went to
(20:02):
another job at the New Era, but then when he
resigned from that, he went back to freelance. Locke's letter
appeared on the front page of the New World on
May sixteenth of eighteen forty, and in it he said
that he had written the Great Moon hoax, but that
it had not been intended as a hoax. He claimed
that it had been written as satire, intended to skewer
(20:23):
the effect that religion was having on science, which he
believed led to the acceptance of fanciful thinking over solid truth,
and so that would seem to clear the um the
case on whether or not Alack had written it. However,
there is still some debate over whether he could have
even written this series, given the information about astronomy that
(20:44):
can that it contained, and that some people say he
just would not have known. Uh. It is of course
entirely possible that Locke could have consulted with experts, or
that multiple writers worked on these accounts that they put
forward as the work of this fictional uh dr Andrew Grant.
And it's also entirely conceivable that Locke may have learned
(21:05):
enough about astronomy through his own reading. He was apparently
a very well read man and sort of a lifelong
learner that he could have written this piece without assistance.
So it's not an open and shut but most people
still think Locke did do the writing. You may be wondering,
I know I was exactly what Sir John Herschel thought
of all of this, And while all of this work
(21:27):
was going down in the States, Sir John Herschel was
still in South Africa doing actual, legitimate astronomy work. In
late eighteen thirty five, he was given a copy of
the narrative that The Sun had published, which had cited
his work, and his initial reactions seemed to be one
of amusement. He said to have remarked that his own
actual work would probably seem quite dull by comparison once
(21:50):
it was published. So even though the initial reception on
his part was pretty jolly, over time that amusement wore
right off. Uh. Several years down the road, he wrote
a letter to his aunt Caroline Herschel, who was also
an astronomer of some renowned I have been pestered from
all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the moon in English, French,
(22:13):
Italian and German. As for the Sun, it continued its
circulation until it merged with the New York World Telegram
in nineteen fifty, and that company eventually went under in
nineteen sixty seven. And that's the great Moon hoax, which
I think I did not credit earlier, but our listener
(22:34):
Brian wrote to us and mentioned this a while back,
and it kind of went on my list and I've
been eyeballing it ever since, so I'm glad that this
was the week that I carved out time to do it. Yeah.
I UM, I was actually out of the office while
you were working on this, and you had emailed me
and said that we were going to talk about the
moon hoax, and I was immediately really excited because I
loved that episode of The Memory Palace that you mentioned
(22:56):
at the top of the episode. If you don't listen
to the Memory Palace, it is quite different from what
we do. They are very short episodes. They usually have
some music that goes along with them in the background,
and it's more like a brief story about something that
happened in history. UM. I find them to be very
lovely and charming, and the one on this is particularly
(23:18):
lovely and charming. Yeah. I like to think of it
as it uh like history as art. Yeah podcast. Yeah
there there, it's really really delightfully done. I like it heaps.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this classic.
(23:38):
If you have heard any kind of email address or
maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of
the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly
obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You
can now reach us at history podcast at i heart
radio dot com, and we're all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
(24:01):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuffy miss in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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