The Great Lunar Hoax of 1835: Bat People on The Moon!

Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale.  This week, your Curator Kara is Taking Us to The Moon!

A New York newspaper once got thousands of people to believe there were bat-like humanoids living on the moon, and the wild part is how reasonable it sounded at the time. We walk through the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, the infamous run of articles published by the New York Sun that claimed Sir John Herschel had a next-level telescope capable of spotting lunar forests, temples, strange animals, and “Vespatrilo Homo” flying around like it was normal field research. The story didn’t spread because people were dumb. It spread because it was written like science, released in a bingeable series, and backed by names that sounded impossible to question. 

From there, we connect the dots to today’s world of viral posts, “trust me bro” sources, and even AI-generated answers that sound authoritative while being totally wrong. 

Listen now, then subscribe, share with a fellow oddball, and leave a review.

Reference Shout Outs:

• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/great-moon-hoax-1835-180955833/

• • https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030313/1835-08-25/ed-1/

• • https://www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Moon-Hoax

• • https://www.history.com/news/1835-great-moon-hoax-newspaper

• • https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-great-moon-hoax-of-1835/278623/

• • https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-great-moon-hoax/

• • https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.108.1.22

• • https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/the-great-moon-hoax.html

• • https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/marchapril/statement/the-great-moon-hoax

• • https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/great-moon-hoax

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax

Each Week at the Oddity Shop, Your Curators Kara and Zach will bring you stories from Cryptids to Conspiracies, Cults to Curiosities, Myths to Mysteries, and so much more!

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