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IN 1835 there was life on the moon, or so people were led to believe. Hoaxed by New York paper The Sun on “recent discoveries” by astronomer John Herschel, many Americans eagerly imagined lunar herds of zebra, unicorns and man-bats. Goodman strips away layers of deception by journalist Richard Adams Locke to fully reveal what was hailed as the era’s “most stupendous scientific imposition upon the public”. Theological debates over extraterrestrial life, sensationalism and new technology, he says, met within a writer so pioneering in his science fiction that even Edgar Allan Poe declared him a genius.

Read about seven of the ‘best’ scientific hoaxes