On this day in 1835 the New York newspaper, The Sun, began a series of six articles that reported the discovery of a civilization on the moon by the renowned astronomer Sir John Herschel.
While the true authorship has never been conclusively determined, and various names have been floated, as well as co-conspirators, in all likelihood it was the work of an English journalist Richard Adams Locke.
Puts contemporary Facebook hoaxes to shame…
And, interestingly, sufficiently spectacular and opening so many questions, that it is generally considered to have led to much of what has become journalistic standards for veracity in the years that followed.
Worthy as a footnote for our times, I suspect…
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