Life on the Moon" the first media hoax

 

Sir John Herschel 

Sir William Herschel was born in the Electorate of Hanover in what is now Germany, but found fame and fortune in Britain where he emigrated at the age of 19. He is remembered as the person who discovered Uranus and several moons of Saturn and was instrumental, together with his sister Caroline in charting the stars with the help of superb telescopes that he and his sister constructed in their home in Bath, England.

His son, Sir John Herschel was also an astronomer and, in a sense continued where he left off. However, today’s story is not of their scientific discoveries, but of how the son, Sir John was used by an unscrupulous newspaper in New York to perpetrate a hoax that led to a sensation in  the United States and the rest of the world and sold more newspapers than any other story in the past.

Richard Adams Locke

This was the era of the penny press, when cheap, easily available newspapers first began to come into the market. These newspapers were mainly aimed at less educated immigrants and contained human interest stories and information about the homeland that they had left behind. There was cut throat competition between these tabloids and sensational news was at a premium. It was not always necessary that it should be true. There are many resemblances to the Indian “news” channels today.

The New York Sun was one such newspaper. Founded by Benjamin Day, it was the flagship of the newspapers that flooded the New York streets in those days. Richard Adams Locke( 1800-1871) was a descendent of the famous philosopher John Locke ( 1632-1704).Richard had graduated from Cambridge University and  after several short lived jobs in many newspapers and magazines in Britain and in the United States arrived in New York and took over as the editor of the New York Sun. The Sun was then a poor second to the New York Herald which outsold them by a huge margin and Locke decided that he needed a story that would create a huge splash. And that is exactly what he created.

He came up with a six part story that became one of the biggest media hoaxes of all time. The entire story, which ran to 17000 words claimed to be reproducing material from the Edinburgh Journal of Science, a journal that did not exist. The first part of the story, published on August 21, 1835, was relatively staid. In it he described how Sir John Herschel had made some remarkable discoveries using a new telescope that was 7 tons in weight had had a magnifying power of 42,000 times. This, he claimed, had made it possible for him to discover evidence of life in the moon. After this tantalising hint, Locke did not elaborate further, but gave entirely imaginary details of the telescope and how it was manufactured.

Illustration from the article showing the denizens of the moon

Verspertilio homo as imagined by the illustrators

This article, while it was noticed, did not make “waves” as they say. But in his second article, on August 26^th, he elaborated further. Sir John was supposed to have travelled to South Africa on an expedition which the then King William had allegedly sponsored to the tune of 70,000 pounds. As it happened, Sir John was in South Africa alright, but he was on a shoe string budget and had used his own resources. According to the article he was accompanied by Dr Andrew Grant, who had supposedly written up his discoveries for the Edinburgh Journal of Science.

To quote “The readers could learn from this part about the "highly interesting discoveries which had been made in the lunar world: by directing the telescope towards the Moon, the astronomers could observe the general geography of the planet, and soon discovered that it contained plant life: the greenish-brown lunar basaltic rocks were covered with dark-red flowers, similar to the rose-poppy on Earth. What interested the readers most was whether the planet supported animal life, and their curiosity was soon satisfied, as in a lunar forest area large herds of brown quadrupeds were spotted, very similar to bison, except for a remarkable fleshy appendage over their eyes, crossing the whole breadth of the forehead and united to the ears, found to be a common feature of all lunar quadrupeds. Other extraterrestrials discovered included a goat of bluish lead color, with a single horn, and "a strange amphibious creature, of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach."

On the third day, it was revealed that there were beaver like bipeds in the moon who were intelligent and built huts which were allegedly better constructed than those of many less developed tribes on earth and on the fourth day, it was revealed that there were human like creatures on the moon. To quote from the article “They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs. The face, which was of a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang outang, being more open and intelligent in its expression, and having a much greater expansion of forehead. The mouth, however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw, and by lips far more human than those of any species of simia genus.”

Herschel reportedly named the species Vespertilio-homo (man-bat) and soon discovered that they were capable of intelligent conversation, thus were by all means rational creatures, but he was surprised to  notice that they were mating with each other out in public!  Suspecting that the existence of intelligent life on the Moon will be found by most readers the most difficult to believe, the editor quickly added that the detailed account would be published by Herschel, along with the certificates of civil and military authorities of the colony, as well as religious ministers, who had been allowed to visit the observatory and had become eye-witnesses themselves.

On Day 5, Locke revealed that a temple had been found in the moon which was made of something that resembled sapphire and that there was globe surrounded by flames on its roof. On Day 6, Locke reported that a new type of hominid had been seen which was “of larger stature than the former specimens, less dark in color, and in every respect an improved variety of the race.". This was called the Verspitilo Homo.

The discoveries were alleged to have ceased because a faulty positioning of the telescope during the day allowed it to collect sunrays and this burned down the observatory, and by the time Herschel got it up and running again, the “moon was no longer observable”.

The first installment of the article did not evoke much notice, but subsequent episodes led to an explosion of interest, causing the circulation of the Sun to reach, 19,360, which exceeded that of the Times, London, which was the highest circulated daily in the world at that time at 17,000. The office was stormed by readers every morning as the new issues were published and many other papers fell for the hoax and reproduced the material.  Even the New York Times called the discoveries "probable and possible" and The New Yorker hailed it as creator of "a new era in astronomy and science in general”.

At the Yale University the news was hotly discussed and was accepted entirely. As one student later wrote “Yale College was alive with staunch supporters. The literati - students and professors, doctors in divinity and law - and all the rest of the reading community, looked daily for the arrival of the New York mail with unexampled avidity and implicit faith. Have you seen the accounts of Sir John Herschel's wonderful discoveries? Have you read The Sun? Have you heard the news of the man in the Moon? These were the questions that met you everywhere. It was the absorbing topic of the day. Nobody expressed or entertained a doubt as to the truth of the story.”

It took more than two weeks for the truth to come out and when there was widespread doubt expressed about the veracity of the story Locke blamed the Edinburgh Journal of Science for the whole affair. It took six weeks before the definitive news could come to the United States in those days of sailing ships that no such journal existed and no journal had published such a story.

Again in keeping with what has become a tradition for false news, the newspaper never acknowledged that it was a hoax, merely publishing this clarification “"Certain correspondents have been urging us to come out and confess the whole to be a hoax; but this we can by no means do, until we have the testimony of the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a declaration."