Lunar animals in 1835 – Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin

Today, the Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin remembers the Moon Hoax that began its first installment on August 25, 1835 in the New York Sun newspaper.

Different in media and style, the Orson Welles program War of the Worlds reminds us of the Moon Hoax even though Mr. Welles began his radio program by telling people it was fiction.

The magazine of Current Literature of September 1888 provided background information about the “Moon Hoax” with a few excerpts as well.

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The most celebrated deception on the public which was ever perpetrated by a newspaper upon its readers was the Moon Hoax of Richard Adams Locke in the New York Sun in August, 1835.

In those days there was neither cable nor Atlantic steamers, and all news from Europe was brought to this country by the old packet liners.

For a year or more the scientific world had been looking forward to the discoveries to be made by Sir John Herschel, the great astronomer who had taken Lord Rosse’s large telescope to the Cape of Good Hope.

It was hoped and believed that the clear atmosphere of the Cape would result in more startling revelations of the stars than had ever before been had.

It was just at this time that Mr. Locke wrote his Moon Hoax, and the effect upon the people was extraordinary.

Hundreds believed it, among whom was Horace Greeley, who wrote an article to prove that it must be true.

Benjamin H. Day, then the proprietor of the Sun, has put upon record the circumstances under which the hoax was written.

“Locke was reporting on the Courier and Enquirer,” said Mr. Day, “ when he wrote an account of a hanging at Peekskill for the Sun.

“A few days afterward he came to me and told me he had been discharged from the Courier for writing for my paper. At the same time he proposed the scheme of the Moon Hoax.

“We were to claim that we had received a Copy of the Edinburgh Journal of Science, in which this account of Sir John Herschel’s discoveries was printed. After some talk I agreed.

“The most original thing about Locke’s article, and the one which deceived the greatest number of people, was his statement that by applying a microscope to the image projected by the telescope, the object looked at, the moon, was doubly magnified.

“Well, we printed the story, and it set the town wild. It took two days to print the whole of it, and it was a very good thing for the Sun.

“A committee appointed by Yale College came down and wanted to see the copy of the Edinburgh paper, but I staved them off by affecting great indignation at their doubt of the Sun’s reliability.

“The hoax would have been more successful than it was had it not been for Locke’s folly.

“He got drunk and told a reporter of the Journal of Commerce that he wrote the story.

“As I found out, the Journal was prepared to indorse the hoax before this.

“Of course it came out then and denounced the story as a hoax, saying that Locke invented it.

“Curiously enough, for a short time the war over the truth or falsehood of the account raged furiously, many people, who did not like to admit that they had been fooled, standing up stoutly for its genuineness; but the first mail from Europe upset the whole thing, of course.

“The original agreement with Locke was that he should be paid $300 for the article, but he finally made between $500 and $600.

“He sold a large number of wood-cuts representing the animals and men in the moon, and he reprinted the article in pamphlet form.”

The following extracts from the Moon Hoax will give an idea of Mr. Locke’s style and the boldness of his imagination.

After an elaborate account of the difficulties experienced in setting up the great telescope, he describes the principal discoveries in the moon as follows:

“It was about half-past nine on the night of the 10th, the moon having then advanced within four days of her mean libration, that the astronomer adjusted his instrument for the inspection of the moon’s eastern limb.

“Small collections of trees of every imaginable kind were scattered about the whole of the luxuriant area; and here our magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens of conscious existence.

“In the shade of the woods on the southeastern side we beheld continuous herds of brown quadrupeds having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.

“Its tail is like that of our bos grunniens, but in its semicircular horns, the hump on its shoulders and the depth on its dewlap and the length of its shaggy hair it closely resembles the species to which I first compared it.

“It had, however, one widely distinguishing feature, which we afterward found to be common to nearly every lunar quadruped we have discovered, namely, a remarkable fleshy appendage over the eyes crossing the whole breadth of the forehead and united to the ears.

“We could most distinctly perceive this hairy veil, which was shaped like the upper front outline of a cap, known to the ladies as Mary Queen of Scots’ cap, lifted and lowered by means of the ears.

“It immediately occurred to the acute mind of Dr. Herschel that this was a providential contrivance to protect the eyes of the animal from the great extremes of light and darkness to which all the inhabitants of our side of the moon are periodically subjected.

“The next animal perceived would be classed on earth as a monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size of a goat, with a head and heard like him and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular.

“The female was destitute of the horn and beard, but had a much longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the acclivitous glades of the woods.

“In elegance of symmetry it rivaled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile, sprightly creature, running with great speed and springing from the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of a young lamb or kitten.

“This beautiful creature afforded us the most exquisite and constant amusement.”

“ But while gazing upon them in a perspective of about half a mile, we were thrilled with astonishment to perceive four successive flocks of large-winged creatures, wholly unlike any kind of birds, descend with a slow, even motion from the cliffs on the western side and alight upon the plain.

“Now they were noticed by Dr. Herschel, who exclaimed : ‘Now, gentlemen, my theories against your proofs, which you have often found a pretty even bet, we have here something worth looking at. I was confident that if ever we found beings in human shape it would be in this longitude, and that they would be provided by their Creator with some extraordinary powers of locomotion. First exchange for my number D.’

“This lens being soon introduced, gave us a fine half-mile distance, and we counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine and fifteen in each, walking erect toward a small wood near the base of the eastern precipices.

“Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified.

“Having observed them at this distance for some minutes we introduced lens H z, which brought them to the apparrent proximity of eighty yards, the highest clear magnitude we possessed until the latter end of March, when we effected an improvement in the gas burners.

“About half of the first party had passed our canvas; but of all the others we had a perfectly distinct view.

“They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs.

“The face, which was of a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orangutan, being more open and intelligent in its expression, and having a much greater expansion of forehead.

“The mouth, however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw, and by lips far more human than of any species of the simia genus.

“In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely superior to the orangutan; so much so, that, but for their long wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia!

“The hair on the head was a darker color than that of the body, closely curled, but apparently not woolly, and arranged in two curious semicircles over the temples of the forehead.

“Their feet could only be seen as they were alternately lifted in walking, but, from what we could see of them in so transient a view, they appeared thin, and very protuberant at the heel.

“Whilst passing across the canvas and whenever we afterward saw them, these creatures were evidently engaged in conversation; their gesticulation, more particularly the varied action of their hands and arms, appeared impassioned and emphatic; we hence inferred that they were rational beings, and although not perhaps of so high an order as others which we discovered the next month on the shores of the Bay of Rainbows, that they were capable of producing works of art and contrivance.

“The next view we obtained of them was still more favorable. It was on the borders of a little lake or expanded stream which we then for the first time perceived running down the valley to a large lake and having on its eastern margin a small wood.

“Some of these creatures had crossed the water and were lying like spread eagles on the skirts of the wood.

“We could then perceive that their wings possessed great expansion and were similar in structure to those of a bat, being a semi-transparent membrane expanded in curvilinear divisions by means of straight radii united at the back by the dorsal integuments.

“But what astonished us very much was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width.

“The wings seemed completely under command of volition, for those of the creatures whom we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water, and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form.

“We scientifically de nominated them the Vespertiliohomo, or man-bat; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, not withstanding that some of their amusements would but ill com port with our terrestrial notions of decorum.”

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The Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin shows against one of Richard Adams Locke’ imaginations of the lunar animals, circa 1835.

Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin