On its website, the Smithsonian has posted scans from the infamous Great Moon Hoax series of news articles that ran in the New York Sun in 1835 and captivated New York and beyond.
The Sun attributed the discoveries (falsely) to Sir John Herschel who was a well-known astronomer of the time which lended an air of authenticity to the otherwise incredulous tale of bat-like people living on the Moon.
Matthew Goldman wrote an excellent book, The Sun and the Moon, which chronicles the hoax and contextualizes it within the framework of the rise of cheap, mass market newspapers in the first half of the 19th century.
