This Day in History: 1835-08-25

Great Moon Hoax begins on this day in 1835. The New York Sun newspaper, one of the first of the “penny press,” claimed that Sir John Hirschel, a famed astronomer then known to be in South Africa, had discovered fabulous winged creatures on the moon. Herschel was said to have been amused by the hoax at first, but then became annoyed with having to constantly answer questions about it. Benjamin Day, the Sun’s editor and publisher, probably made the story up to compete with James Gordon Bennett’s wildly successful crime and scandal sheet, the New York Herald.