{"id":13773,"date":"2025-04-29T11:19:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T18:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=13773"},"modified":"2025-06-06T11:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T18:21:42","slug":"moonprank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2025\/04\/29\/moonprank\/","title":{"rendered":"Moonprank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from How Stuff Works<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ridiculous History: The Great Moon Hoax of August 1835<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

By:\u00a0Bryan Young<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"great
This 1838 French print by the Thierry brothers imagines the landscape and inhabitants of the moon. The stories that ran in The New York Sun would inspire multiple artists. Notice those moon beings kibitzing in the foreground.\u00a0\u00a0SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Aug. 25, 1835, The New York Sun ran the first in a series<\/a> of newspaper articles describing scientific findings from the moon<\/a>. Known as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposed to have been reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and written by Dr. Andrew Grant, a colleague of the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel. The series featured some of the most popular articles the New York newspaper had ever printed at the time, and people clamored to read about the breaking scientific news of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The articles describe Herschel, who had traveled to Capetown, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new\u00a0telescope<\/a>. Grant’s\u00a0writings suggested<\/a>\u00a0that while in South Africa, Herschel had found evidence of life on the moon, including unicorns, two-legged beavers and\u00a0humanoids that<\/a>\u00a0“average 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 on their backs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The articles also described the moon’s geography as having massive craters, amethyst crystals, flowing rivers and lush vegetation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at How Stuff Works<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from How Stuff Works Ridiculous History: The Great Moon Hoax of August 1835 By:\u00a0Bryan Young On Aug. 25, 1835, The New York Sun ran the first in a series of newspaper articles describing scientific findings from the moon. Known as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposed to have been reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mirth","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}