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Odd Historic Moments that Are Almost too Weird to Handle

Khalid Elhassan May 31, 2021 34 min

Filipinos protesting the Marcos regime. Canadian Inquirer

Sir John Herschel. Computer History Museum

15. The Bizarre Summer of 1835

1835 was one of the more bizarre years in the history of the United States. That summer, excitement gripped the country when a New York newspaper, The Sun, announced the recent discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. It began with a newspaper article, the first of six in a series, that was published on August 25^th. In it, the newspaper announced that Sir John Herschel, the era’s leading astronomer, had used powerful telescopes to get a clear glimpse of the Moon’s surface.

What Sir John saw was stunning. It astonished him and upended all human knowledge to date. As The Sun described it: “By means of a telescope of immense dimensions and an entirely new principle“, Herschel had discovered planets in other solar system, 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, however: the prominent astronomer 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.