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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Some people believed the Great Moon Hoax, the Cottingley Fairies photographs and the Cardiff Giant’s claims; some listeners were frightened by the 1938 War of the Worlds radio play. But none of these cases proves that everyone—or even a measurable majority—accepted the story. Their stranger lesson is how a convincing format, borrowed authority and public spectacle could make a false claim seem plausible.
What makes these fake news stories worth comparing?
“Fake news” here means a fabricated or misleading story presented in a way that invited belief. The four cases used different media: a newspaper series, photographs, a physical spectacle and a radio play. They also borrowed different kinds of authority, from astronomy and photography to religion and journalism. Evidence that some people believed or reacted strongly is not the same as evidence that the public as a whole did.
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The Great Moon Hoax: a fabricated scientific report
In 1835, the New York Sun ran reports attributed to a fictitious assistant, Andrew Grant, and presented them as observations connected to astronomer John Herschel’s real expedition in South Africa. The articles cited the Edinburgh Journal of Science and used the tone of scientific reporting. They began amid genuine interest in astronomy and then described increasingly extraordinary lunar scenery and life, including winged humanoids. The Library of Congress’s account explains how that mix of real context and invented observation helped the story travel.
Other newspapers reprinted the reports, but their reactions were mixed: some treated them as genuine, while others called them a hoax. The more fantastic later installment helped prompt skepticism, and accusations of fraud took weeks to catch up with the story. The familiar claim that the public uniformly believed the reports goes beyond the evidence; readers who doubted the story also helped keep it in circulation.
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Richard Adams Locke, widely suspected of writing the articles, denied responsibility in a letter published by the New York Evening Post. He wrote, “I beg to state, as unequivocally as the words can express it, that I did not make those discoveries…” His denial is a contemporary statement, not proof that he was uninvolved.
The Cottingley Fairies: staged photographs that persuaded adults
In 1917, cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths made photographs showing themselves with fairies. Elsie drew the figures, and the girls used hatpins to hold the cutouts in place. According to the National Science and Media Museum, Elsie initially saw the photographs as a practical joke, while Frances wanted to support her claim that she had played with fairies.
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The images nevertheless gained influential adult believers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Elsie disclosed in a 1983 letter to photographic journalist Geoffrey Crawley that all five photographs had been faked. The museum notes a wrinkle in the later accounts: Frances continued to insist that one image was genuine. That disagreement does not change Elsie’s disclosure, but it is a reason to describe the girls’ recollections carefully rather than flattening them into a single account.
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The Cardiff Giant: a spectacle shaped by science, religion and commerce
In 1869, a farmer in Cardiff, New York, claimed that a large object found on his property was the fossilized remains of a prehistoric giant, perhaps one connected to biblical history. The episode is described as a scientific hoax in a historical article abstract indexed by PubMed. The object’s meaning shifted as scientific authority, religious belief and commercial interests became entangled.
The giant’s display attracted attention and dispute, but that does not show that every visitor accepted the same explanation. Its value as a case study is how a physical spectacle could invite competing interpretations while also serving as a commercial draw.
Did people really believe the War of the Worlds broadcast?
Some listeners were frightened by Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation, but the popular image of a nationwide panic is not established by the archival evidence described by the National Archives. Letters and telegrams in Federal Communications Commission records show varied reactions: one child reported that his mother and sister became frightened and that the family turned the broadcast off; other correspondents said they listened calmly or mocked claims of panic.
One listener, J. V. Yaukey of Aberdeen, South Dakota, wrote that he “sat serenely entertained no end by the fine portrayal of a fine play.” His letter, preserved in the National Archives account, records one person’s reaction, not a representative survey. It helps show why listeners’ experiences should not be collapsed into a single story of mass hysteria.
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| Case | Medium and borrowed authority | What the evidence supports |
|---|---|---|
| Great Moon Hoax (1835) | Newspaper reports styled as scientific observation; genuine interest in astronomy | Some papers and readers treated the reports as authentic, while others suspected a hoax. Uniform public belief is not established. |
| Cottingley Fairies (1917–1920; disclosure in 1983) | Photographs that appeared to document fairies; influential adult endorsement | The images were staged with drawings and hatpins. Arthur Conan Doyle accepted them as genuine; Frances later maintained one image was real. |
| Cardiff Giant (1869) | Physical display associated with scientific, religious and commercial interpretations | The episode was a scientific hoax that drew attention and dispute; the evidence does not establish that all observers shared one belief. |
| War of the Worlds (1938) | Radio drama presented in a news-like style | Some listeners were frightened, and others were not. The cited archival correspondence does not establish nationwide panic. |
Across the cases, a familiar medium or borrowed authority could make an extraordinary claim feel credible. Yet the evidence differs: the Cottingley photographs were later identified as fabricated, while accounts of reactions to the Moon Hoax and radio broadcast show disagreement rather than a single public response. None supplies a reliable count of how many people believed the story.
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