It’s a mystery why we still ask whether we’re alone in the universe, isn’t it, when you consider that this question was definitively answered by the New York Sun exactly 188 years ago? For this was the day we learned there were man-bats and bipedal beavers living on the moon.
It began on 21 August 1835 with a headline, Celestial Discoveries, and a short announcement that Sir John Herschel had made “some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description”. Then, the next Tuesday, 25th, they reprinted an article from a scientific journal.
The Edinburgh Journal of Science had ceased publication two years earlier, but most readers didn’t know that, which may have encouraged them to believe that a telescope with a 7-ton lens which could magnify things 42,000 times actually existed.
Apparently, the moon was covered with things wondrous and strange. There was the bison-like creature with “a remarkably fleshy appendage over the eyes” to protect them from the Sun. There was also
the biped beaver. The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than its destitution of a tail, and its invariable habit of walking only upon two feet. It carries its young in its arms like a human being, and moves with an easy gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them, there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire
There was the “gregarious … sprightly” and “of blueish lead colour” unicorn goat, too — and, most excitingly of all, humanoids with wings:
They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-coloured hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs. The face, which was of a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large ourang 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 the simia genus. In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely superior to the ourang outang; so much so, that, but for their long wings, Lieut. Drummond said they would look as well on parade ground as some of the old cockney militia!
The man-bat (Vespertilio-homo) was “capable of intelligent conversation … [a] rational creature”, but had a drawback: “they were mating with each other out in public!” Ah, man-bat dogging. Inevitable, really.
But then, tragedy! The telescope was lowered one night, but caught the sun’s rays, and burnt down the observatory, so the series of amazing discoveries came to an end. Or Richard Adams Locke, the Sun’s editor, had finally — after 11,000 words — run out of inspiration.
Locke had been editor of the Sun for just two months. It was a penny paper, at a time when proper newspapers cost six cents and covered Serious Matters. It had previously contented itself with “salacious crime and other stories”.
The proprietor, Benjamin Day, must have been delighted with his new appointment. According to Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace:
The Sun was a runaway success. Within four months its circulation of four thou- sand brought it abreast of Webb’s Courier and Enquirer. By 1834 Day had made enough money to install a machine press with a capacity of a thousand copies per hour, equal to the demands of his paper’s now ten thousand purchasers. A year later, with readership at fifteen thousand, he switched to a steam press with an hourly capacity of fifty-five hundred. During the moon hoax, daily circulation hit twenty thousand: four times that of the most successful sixpenny, more than the Methodists’ weekly Christian Advocate and Journal, and more than the London Times. The Sun had become, for the moment, the biggest-selling paper in the world.
Locke was, of course, taking the piss as part of a sales war — but he wasn’t the only one:
Most other papers told their readers it was a hoax, but the Cincinnati Republican called it “one of the most important celestial discoveries that science can boast of”. The Cincinnati Advertiser, though, said “public confidence” was “greatly shaken”
The Sun kept people guessing, naturally. Making Herschel their ‘source’ gave the story credibility, and the non-existence of the telephone at the time made it challenging to refute.
Also, a few months before, the Sun had printed a picture of the remarkable things which could be seen in a droplet of water through a microscope. This was an age of discovery, after all, and strange new worlds weren’t entirely unrealistic.
Plus their arch-rival, The New York Herald, had seen its offices burn down at the beginning of August, and only managed to print its Astronomical Hoax Explained column on 31 August.
Locke may have taken inspiration from an Edgar Allan Poe story, Hans Phaall — A Tale, about a balloon trip to the moon published that June, and could well have been riffing on the work of Rev. Thomas Dick, ‘Christian Philosopher’, who had calculated
Either way, the Sun never fessed up, and, better still, no one gave a shit. As Professor Ulf Jonas Bjork says: “I’m only speculating, but maybe it didn’t matter to them whether it was a hoax or not, because it was fun”.
According to a book about the business, The Sun and The Moon, by Matthew Goodman, Locke sometimes claimed to be a direct descendant of philosopher John Locke, but — appropriately — this wasn’t strictly true.
By the sounds of it, Lewis’s is the life I should be investigating next. It must have been an eventful one. Anyway, Goodman opens his book with this quote from the famous forebear:
…to which one can only respond: well, quite.
