Art: University of Dundee.
Phantasmogoria: how the New York Times portrayed the moon and its inhabitants. University of Dundee.
Keith Williams
Batmen, unicorns, and Men on the Moon If you think ‘fake’ news is something new, just read this …
I
n 16th-century Britain a common saying to describe hoaxing someone was “to make one believe the Moon is made of green cheese”. Absurd, of course. So perhaps people were more credulous by the middle of the 19th-century, when a news-
paper editor perpetrated what became known as the Great Moon Hoax, persuading gullible readers that on the Moon you could find unicorns and other fantastic beasts. The Great Moon Hoax refers to six articles in the New York Sun
headlined “Great Astronomical Discoveries” and allegedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Beginning on August 25 1835, they revealed a lunar ecology and civilisation. The hoax tested the parameters of media credibility and “fake news” in the
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