The Great Moon Hoax

Starting August 25, 1835, the New York Sun ran a six-part series claiming the astronomer Sir John Herschel had built a monster telescope at the Cape of Good Hope and used it to spot forests, bison, unicorns, bipedal beavers, and bat-winged humanoids the articles called Vespertilio-homo living on the lunar surface. None of it was true. The real author was Sun reporter Richard Adams Locke, who invented the whole thing, including the telescope's supposed size, and did not publicly admit authorship until 1840. Herschel, off in South Africa actually doing astronomy, was amused at first and then annoyed at having to keep answering questions about moon men he never saw. The Sun itself only conceded the series was fabricated on September 16, 1835, and even then never printed a real retraction.