From: Alex Michael Bonnici (albonnici_at_vol.net.mt)
Date: Tue Aug 09 2005 - 06:27:35 UTC
Hello Gang,
Its Tuesday Morning, August 25, 1835 newspaper boys are
yelling at the top of their lungs and announcing the startling
discovery of a civilization on the Moon.
August 25, 1835 marks the 170th anniversary of the famous Locke Moon
Hoax or the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. This Hoax was perpetuated by
Richard Adams Locke a direct linear descendent of the famous political
philosopher John Locke. This story has always held a great deal of
fascination for me since I first came across it back in 1968 in the How
and Why Wonder Book of The Moon. My Parents (God bless them both) seeing
that I had an insatiable interest in Science and Space introduced me to
that series of books and many others. So began my life long habit of
voracious reading.
Here is some background information concerning the Hoax which I obtained
from the following web site:
http://www.xtec.es/recursos/astronom/ask/refmoon.htm
Further links regarding this episode of 19th Century SETI and the whole
series of articles as they appeared in the New York Sun are provided
below.
"Every History of American journalistic hoaxing properly begins with the
celebrated moon hoax which "made" the New York Sun of Benjamin Day. It
consisted of a series of articles, allegedly reprinted from the
nonexistent Edinburgh Journal of Science, relating to the discovery of
life on the moon by Sir John Herschel, eminent British astronomer, who
some time before had gone to the Cape of Good Hope to try out a new type
of powerful telescope.
The first installment of the moon hoax appeared in the August 25, 1835
edition of the New York
Sun on page two, under the heading "Celestial Discoveries." The brief
passage read in part as
follows: "We have just learnt (sic) from an eminent publisher in this
city that Sir John Herschel at the
Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most
wonderful description,
by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle."
As a mater of fact, Herschel had gone to South Africa in January, 1834,
and set up an observatory
at Cape Town. Three columns of the first page of the Sun contained a
story credited to the
Edinburgh Journal of Science. (That publication had suspended some time
before.) There was a
great deal of matter about the importance of Herschelīs impending
announcement of his discoveries.
On August 25, the Sun ran four columns describing what Sir John had been
able to see, looking at
the moon through his telescope.
So fascinating were the descriptions of trees and vegetation, oceans and
beaches, bison and goats,
cranes and pelicans that the whole town was talking even before the
fourth installment appeared on
August 28, 1835, with the master revelation of all: the discovery of
furry, winged men resembling
bats. The narration was printed as follows:
"We counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine and
fifteen in each,
walking erect towards a small wood... Certainly they were like
human beings, for their
wings had now disappeared and their attitude in walking was both
erect and dignified...
About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of
all the others we had
perfectly distinct and deliberate view. 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 the shoulders to the calves of their legs.
The face, which was of a yellowish color, was an improvement upon
that of the large
orangutan... so much so that but for their long wings they would
look as well on a
parade ground as some of the old cockney militia. The hair of the
head was a darker
color than that of the body, closely curled but apparently not
woolly, and arranged in
two circles over the temples of the forehead. Their feet could only
be seen as they were
alternately lifted in walking; but from what we could see of them
in so transient a view
they appeared thin and very protuberant at the heel...We could
perceive that their
wings possessed great expansion and were similar in structure of
those of the bat, being
a semitransparent membrane expanded in curvilinear divisions by
means of straight
radii, united at the back by dorsal integuments. But what
astonished us most was the
circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to
the legs, united all
the way down, though gradually decreasing in width. The wings
seemed completely
under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we
saw bathing in the
water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as
ducks do theirs to shake
off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact
form.
The Sun reached a circulation of 15,000 daily on the first of the
stories. When the discovery of men
on the moon appeared Day was able to announce that the Sun possessed the
largest circulation of
any newspaper in the world: 19,360.
Later stories told of the Temple of the Moon, constructed of sapphire,
with a roof of yellow
resembling gold. There were pillars seventy feet high and six feet thick
supporting the roof of the
temple. More man-bats were discovered and readers of the Sun were
awaiting more astounding
details, but the Sun told them the telescope had, unfortunately, been
left facing the east and the Sun's
rays, concentrated through the lenses, burned a hole "15 feet in
circumference" entirely through the
reflecting chamber, putting the observatory out of commission.
Rival editors were frantic; many of them pretended to have access to the
original articles and began
reprinting the Sun's series. It was not until the Journal of Commerce
sought permission to publish the
series in pamphlet form, however, that Richard Adams Locke, confessed
authorship. Some
authorities think that a French scientist, Nicollet, in this country at
the time, wrote them.
Before Locke's confession a committee of scientists from Yale University
hastened to New York to
inspect the original articles; it was shunted from editorial office to
print shop and back again until it
tired and returned to New Haven. Edgar Allan Poe explained that he
stopped work on the second
part of The Strange Adventures of Hans Pfaall because he had felt he had
been outdone. So many
writers have perpetuated the legend that Harriet Martineau in her
Retrospect of Western Travel said
a Springfield, Massachusetts, missionary society resolved to send
missionaries to the moon to
convert and civilize the bat men.
After a number of his competitors, humiliated because they had "lifted"
the series and passed it off as
their own, upbraided Day, the Sun of September 16, 1835, admitted the
hoax. When the hoax was
exposed people were generally amused. It did not seem to lessen interest
in the Sun, which never
lost its increased circulation."
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/moonhoax.html
Read the story by Edgar Allan Poe that inspired Locke:
The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal
http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/P/PoeEdgarAllan/prose/raven_1/hanspfaal.html
Enjoy and happy anniversary,
Alex Michael Bonnici
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