The Great Moon Hoax
A newspaper 'finds' unicorns and bat-men on the Moon
In August 1835 New York's The Sun ran six articles claiming astronomer John Herschel had seen life on the Moon through a giant telescope: bison, unicorns, two-legged beavers and winged bat-men who built temples. Weeks later the paper admitted it was invented.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
In 1835 a New York paper 'discovered' winged people on the Moon. The Sun's hoax about lunar unicorns and bat-men sent its sales soaring, and the paper never printed a retraction. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 21 years earlier
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — 2 years earlier
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — 4 years later
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 10 years later
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 23 years earlier
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 7 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 4 years later
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 4 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — same year
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 12 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 20 years earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 4 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 4 years later
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — 15 years later
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 18 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 36)
- Charles Darwin (aged 26)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 26)
- Karl Marx (aged 17)
- Queen Victoria (aged 16)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 14)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 7)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 1)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 75)
- Andrew Jackson (aged 68)