The Great Moon Hoax at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax

A series of articles originally published in the Sun, Aug. 1835, under title "Great astronomical discoveries", which purported to be an account of the discoveries of Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope, and which pretended to be reprinted from a supplement to the Edinburgh journal of science (then defunct). Sometimes attributed to Joseph Nicolas Nicollet.

Release date is 2020-07-28

Produced by deaurider, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

"The Moon Hoax: Or, A Discovery that the Moon has a Vast Population of Human…" is a series of newspaper articles published in 1835. Beginning on August 25, The Sun newspaper reported astonishing discoveries of life on the Moon—including winged humanoids, unicorns, and temples—falsely attributed to astronomer Sir John Herschel. The elaborate hoax described observations through a massive telescope and captivated readers for weeks. Written by reporter Richard Adams Locke, the articles were intended as satire of extravagant astronomical theories, yet fooled the public and established the paper's fame. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Original publication data not identified