The Great Moon Hoax
DebunkedSummary
In August 1835 the New York Sun described life on the Moon in six instalments, credited to Sir John Herschel and a giant telescope at the Cape. It was invented, almost certainly by the Sun writer Richard Adams Locke, who claimed it in 1840.
The series described forests, seas, bison, a bluish one-horned goat, beavers that walked upright and winged humanoids covered in copper-coloured hair. It cited a Scottish scientific journal that had stopped publishing three years earlier. Rival newspapers called it fiction within days. The Sun never retracted it.
What is documented
The series. On Friday 21 August 1835 a short notice in the Sun promised astronomical news. The six instalments followed on Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26, Thursday 27, Friday 28 and Saturday 29 August, and Monday 31 August, under the headline "Great Astronomical Discoveries, Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c. at the Cape of Good Hope". They were presented as extracts from a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, written by a "Dr. Andrew Grant", described as the pupil of the elder Herschel and the inseparable colleague of the younger.
The telescope and the discoveries. The instrument's lens was said to weigh 14,826 pounds, "or nearly seven tons", with a magnifying power of 42,000 times. Through it the narrator reported forests and seas, herds of brown quadrupeds like bison, a bluish goat with a single horn, beavers that walked on two feet and carried their young, and a race of winged humanoids: "We scientifically denominated them the Vespertilio-homo, or man-bat."
The source that did not exist. The Edinburgh Journal of Science had ceased publication in 1832, when it was absorbed by the Philosophical Magazine. Herschel himself was real and was at the Cape: he arrived in Cape Town on 15 January 1834, observed from Feldhausen at Claremont, returned to England in 1838, and published his actual results in 1847. He had no part in the story, and did not learn that the discoveries had been attributed to him until much later.
The spread. By the end of August most other New York papers were reprinting the narrative, and within days it had reached Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston; within a month it had crossed to Europe (Museum of Hoaxes). On 30 August the young New Yorker Michael Floy wrote in his diary: "A great talk concerning some discoveries in the moon by Sir John Herschel." An Italian publication illustrated the story with lithographs, one of which the Smithsonian Libraries later exhibited. The 1859 reissue of the text by the New York publisher William Gowans claims that the original pamphlet edition sold 60,000 copies in less than a month.
The exposure. The Journal of Commerce, probably on 28 August, while the series was still running, declared that the article "was manufactured in this country" and belonged with Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. When James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald resumed publication on 31 August, after a fire had destroyed its press, it ran "The Astronomical Hoax Explained" and named Locke as the author. Locke answered in the Evening Star: "I did not make those discoveries." That was true, and it was not a denial of authorship. By late September the mails from Europe had confirmed that the narrative was fiction, and Locke and the Sun's publisher, Benjamin Day, were still maintaining their innocence (Museum of Hoaxes). The Sun did not retract the series.
The author. Locke claimed the work in a front-page letter in the New World on 16 May 1840. He later said it had been meant as satire on the influence of religion on the science of the day (Zielinski, 2015). Edgar Allan Poe, whose story "Hans Phaall" had described a balloon voyage to the Moon earlier that summer, wrote in 1846 that "the general features of the two compositions are nearly identical", and that the first moon instalment had appeared three weeks after his own story. Poe also wrote that "not one person in ten discredited it".
Leading explanations
A deliberate fabrication by Richard Adams Locke. Established. Locke was named within a week, his reply in the Evening Star did not deny writing it, and he claimed the work in 1840. Two motives are usually given: circulation for a cheap daily paper, which is an inference, and satire of the influence of religion on science, which is Locke's own later account and cannot be checked against anything he wrote in 1835.
Co-authors (proposed, unsupported). The French astronomer Jean-Nicolas Nicollet and the editor Lewis Gaylord Clark have both been suggested as collaborators. There is no good evidence that anyone but Locke wrote it.
What the popular version gets wrong
"Everybody believed it." Poe's line about "not one person in ten" is the usual evidence, and Poe was a rival author with a grievance. Belief was widespread, but it was never unopposed. The Journal of Commerce called the story manufactured on about the fourth day of the series, and the Herald named the author on the day the series ended. Confirmation from Europe that it was fiction arrived by mail in late September.
"The hoax made the Sun the best-selling newspaper in the world." The Sun's own boasts point the other way. On 13 August, before the series began, it claimed that 26,000 copies of the previous day's edition had gone out to carriers, a peak the Museum of Hoaxes links to the fire that had destroyed the Herald's press. On 28 August, in the middle of the series, it claimed a circulation of 19,360. The Museum of Hoaxes concludes that the Sun's existing reach made the hoax a success, not the other way round. Both figures are the paper's own and unaudited.
"Yale's astronomers came to the Sun to see the original article." This was a rumour among New York editors in 1835. On 20 September the Evening Star printed a letter insisting that no professors from Yale had visited the Sun. The names usually attached to the story, Denison Olmsted and Elias Loomis, were added in the twentieth century (Museum of Hoaxes).
"The Sun confessed on 16 September 1835." This date circulates in popular histories, including History.com, and from there on Wikipedia. The Museum of Hoaxes, which reconstructs the episode from the newspapers, finds Day and Locke still maintaining their innocence in late September. What the Sun printed on 16 September was a refusal: it would not "confess the whole to be a hoax" without the testimony of English or Scotch papers (Museum of Hoaxes). It never retracted the series.
Current status
Debunked. There was no telescope of that kind, no lunar life, no Dr Andrew Grant and no 1835 Edinburgh Journal of Science, and Herschel had nothing to do with it. The author is identified. What remains soft is the size of the effect: how many readers believed it, and how much it helped the Sun. Both rest on claims made by interested parties at the time, the Sun on one side and Poe on the other.
Sources
- The Sun (New York), 21 August and 25 to 31 August 1835, "Great Astronomical Discoveries, Lately Made by Sir John Herschel". Text as reissued in Locke (1859).
- Locke, R. A. (1859). The Moon Hoax; or, A Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings. New York: William Gowans.
- Museum of Hoaxes (Alex Boese). "The Great Moon Hoax." hoaxes.org. Detailed reconstruction from the 1835 newspapers, including the Journal of Commerce, the New York Herald of 31 August, the Evening Star letters and the Sun's circulation claims of 13 and 28 August 1835.
- Poe, E. A. (1846). "The Literati of New York City", part VI: Richard Adams Locke. Godey's Lady's Book, October 1846.
- Locke, R. A. (1840). Letter to The New World, 16 May 1840.
- Floy, M. Diary entry for 30 August 1835, as quoted by the Museum of Hoaxes.
- Zielinski, S. (2015). "The Great Moon Hoax Was Simply a Sign of Its Time." Smithsonian, 2 July 2015.
- Herschel, J. F. W. (1847). Results of Astronomical Observations Made at the Cape of Good Hope. London.
Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.