AUGUST 25th - Unless You are the Black Sheep

This day in 1835 was the beginning of The Great Moon Hoax. On August 25th, the first in a series of six articles was published in the N.Y. Sun and claimed that the most notable astronomer of the time, Sir John Herschel had discovered a civilization of bat people and a multitude of other strange creatures were inhabiting the lunar surface. A Dr. Andrew Grant wrote the series of articles as the traveling companion of Sir Herschel. But Grant was a fictitious creation of Richard Adams Locke (though Locke never admitted to writing the series of articles). Before you rush to judgement about what a kook Locke was, some people believe he was thumbing his nose at the stupidity of some Americans at the time. Locke was a Cambridge-educated reporter, so I’m guessing he wasn’t a complete dummy. Of course, you never know. You ever seen that Peter Sellers movie Being There? It’s from a Jerzy Kosinski novella, and Peter Sellers plays Chance, a simple gardener who doesn’t exactly have the most sophisticated inner-monologue ruminating through his brain, but people mistake his silent demeanor for wisdom, causing some powerful people to take his advice. It’s no Billy Madison, but it’s quite funny. I’m doubting Locke was playing that game though. He had just started working at The Sun that month, and his way to make a splash was to write a completely fabricated story. He obviously knew that such a sensational story would drive up sales--I still take a gander at The Inquirer to see what Bigfoot looks like each year. But more so than that, apparently people in the 1830’s were convinced there were other life forms among the stars. Rev. Thomas Dick had somehow computed that our Solar System contained 21.9 trillion inhabitants and that the moon itself had 4 million. How he supposedly determined this is lost on me. So Locke, most likely realizing that Rev. Dick was a whack-job, but that people are sheep, decided to create a race of bat-people who lived on the moon as way to say, “You people are stupid.” I mean our country was still trying to figure out how to build railroads, but they believed that we had discovered how many extraterrestrial being were floating around out there? Basically Locke tried to give the American public one giant slap across the face. But of course, people believed the story well after it was reported as a hoax. Because slapping sheep will not a wool sweater make. That makes no sense. But if you read it a certain way you might be able glean a glimmer of profoundness in the nonsense. Or you could just not be a sheep. Unless you’re the black sheep.

This day has been Marked.