The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

boingboing points out this fascinating story:

In the latest episode of The Memory Palace podcast, reporter Nate DiMeo tells the captivating story of "The Great Moon Hoax" of 1835. According to a series of New York Sun articles published that year, a respected astronomer named Sir John Herschel had observed an amazing array of flora and fauna on the moon, including bipedal beavers, winged humanoids, and (yay!) blue unicorns. None of it was true. (Or so we're told now.) And Herschel wasn't even aware until much later that he was the star of this bit of science fiction presented as fact. The lithograph above accompanied one of the articles to illustrate what Herschel had "seen" through his giant telescope.

You can listen to the podcast at The Memory Palace here.

According to Wikipedia, the Moon Hoax spanned six articles, which were likely written by one Richard A. Locke. Locke's intentions, it is said, were "to create a sensational story which would increase sales of the New York Sun, and, second, to ridicule some of the more extravagant astronomical theories that had recently been published." In particular, a "direct object of Locke's satire was certainly Rev. Thomas Dick, who was known as 'The Christian Philosopher' after the title of his first book. Dick had computed that the Solar System contained 21,891,974,404,480 (21+ trillion) inhabitants. In fact, the Moon alone, by his count, would contain 4,200,000,000 inhabitants" - a number higher than the contemporary population of Earth.