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Creative Pranks and Hoaxes in History

Khalid Elhassan February 2, 2020 33 min

18. Discovering Life on the Moon

John Herschel, to whom discovery of life on the Moon was falsely attributed. Wikimedia

Excitement gripped America in the summer of 1835 when a New York newspaper, The Sun, announced the recent discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. In a series of six articles, beginning on August 25^th, Thus Sun described how Sir John Herschel, the era’s leading astronomer, had used powerful telescopes to get a clear glimpse of outer space. What he saw overturned all human knowledge.

The astronomer’s accomplishments were astonishing. “By means of a telescope of immense dimensions and an entirely new principle“, Sir John Herschel had discovered planets in other solar systems, and established new and revolutionary theories. He had also “solved or corrected nearly every problem of mathematical astronomy“. All of that was just a tip of the iceberg: according to The Sun, Herschel had discovered life on the Moon.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.