Moon Men and Bipedal Beavers

It was on this day in 1835 that Richard Adams Locke published his final installment of essays on British Astronomer Sir John Herschel and Herschel's incredible discovery of life on the moon. In the articles, Locke outlined the apparent discovery of spheroid amphibians, goat-like unicorns and finally the 'Vespertilio-Homo', or man-bat, winged men who flew around the gardens Locke claimed Herschel had discovered.
There was a lot of speculation about the possibility of a hoax by society's more learned fellows but to the average Joe the news was spectacular and made the New York Sun the best selling newspaper during that time. The stupefied public learned of the herds of bison that roamed the moon and the up-right beavers who built huts and had fire, but the most shocking news was of the flying men who lived in a golden temple and dwelt in tranquil harmony with all the other beasts who inhabited this garden of delight.
Locke may have outdone himself, however, because while he was poking fun at societies tendency to believe just about anything a scientist claimed was true, an alarming and still current practice amongst us poor and unwashed, it was that unflagging belief that foiled his hoax. He couldn't make the story outlandish enough to make his point. It's only funny when someone gets the joke and very few people got the joke.
The New York Sun never did come right out and say it was a hoax, clinging, to the last, to the 'reports' it had confirming Herschel's work. Herschel was oblivious to what was going on in the States at the time and didn't learn about it until much later. He was amused, at first, saying that his own discoveries were never that interesting, but in the end he would grow furious when people questioned him about the moon-men he had discovered.
What Herschel did leave us with are the names for all of Saturn and Uranus' satellites, his influence on a young Charles Darwin, Herschel Island and the J. Herschel crater (which really does exist on the moon) and his improvements to the photographic process which saw him give Daguerre the key to 'fixing' his images to make them permanent. Not too bad, if a little mundane.
And so here's to Richard Adams Locke. The man who fooled the entire United States into believing that there was life on the moon. Maybe it wasn't all that hard after all. Most Americans still believe that they landed there in 1969. They are a gullible people.