Category: Media Hoaxes

• The "Great Moon Hoax" Continued

  This theory concerns the afterlife of the 1835 Great Moon Hoax, in which some readers and later believers argued that the supposed lunar telescope was not purely fictional but a disguised projection apparatus or optical demonstration used to mislead the public. In this continuation myth, the hoax was recast as something more than sensational journalism: a rehearsal in visual manipulation, a publicity device for expensive astronomy, or an early experiment in mass deception through simulated scientific imagery. The documented record clearly shows that the Moon Hoax was a newspaper fabrication, that The Sun admitted its articles were false in 1835, and that Richard Adams Locke later acknowledged authorship. What remains unproven is the later projector theory itself.