The Great Moon Hoax on This Day in History

This day in history: The first Great Moon Hoax article is published in The New York Sun on this day in 1835, announcing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon.

The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835", was a series of six articles published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of that time, and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.

The articles described animals on the Moon, including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples. There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle".

Authorship of the article has been attributed to Richard Adams Locke (1800–1871), a reporter who, in August 1835, was working for The Sun. Edgar Allan Poe claimed the story was a plagiarism of his earlier work "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall". His editor at the time was Locke. He later published "The Balloon-Hoax" in the same newspaper.

Poe had published his own Moon hoax in late June 1835, two months before the similar Locke Moon hoax, in the Southern Literary Messenger entitled "Hans Phaall – A Tale", later republished as "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall". The story was reprinted in the New York Transcript on September 2–5, 1835, under the headline "Lunar Discoveries, Extraordinary Aerial Voyage by Baron Hans Pfaall".

Poe described a voyage to the Moon in a balloon, in which Pfaall lives for five years on the Moon with lunarians and sends back a lunarian to earth. The Poe Moon hoax was less successful because of the satiric and comical tone of the account. Locke was able to upstage Poe and to steal his thunder. 

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A Pioneer of Detective Fiction on This Day in History

 

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Today in History: Émile Gaboriau was born on this day in 1832. Gaboriau was a pioneer in detective fiction with his famous sleuth, Monsieur Lecoq. In fact, France seems to be the birthplace of the Detective genre. Voltaire, the great French philosopher had a work of philosophical fiction called Zadig, and Zadig, an ancient philosopher, had powers of marvelous deduction. Edgar Allan Poe based his three detective stories in France with his detective Auguste Dupin, and it is said that he may have been inspired by Zadig. These french detectives laid the groundwork for Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes." In fact, Holmes liked to lash out at his predecessors. He once called Poe's Detective Dupin "a very inferior fellow." Holmes also criticized Emile Gaboriau's detective Lecoq. Dr. Watson describes Holmes's reaction:

"Have you read Gaboriau's works?" I asked. "Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?" Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. "Lecoq was a miserable bungler," he said, in an angry voice; "he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid."~A Study in Scarlet

See also: Detective Fiction in France, article in The Saturday Review 1886

The Detectives of Poe, Doyle, and Gaboriau by Carolyn Wells 1913

See also True Crime + Mystery Fiction - 500 Books on 2 DVDroms

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Horror Actor Vincent Price on This Day in History

 

Vincent Price reading the Raven 

This Day In History: Horror actor Vincent Price died on this day in 1993, fittingly in the Halloween season. His biggest movie was perhaps "House of Wax" in 1953, but I was first introduced to him in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971). He was also on Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare" though most now know him for Thriller. He made less that $1000 for his work on Michael Jackson's Thriller, and when the album became huge he expressed frustration over his meager paycheck.

The ten most iconic horror films starring Vincent Price are:

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

The Fly (1958)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

House of Wax (1953)

House On Haunted Hill (1959)

The Tingler (1959)

House of Usher (1960)

Theater of Blood (1973)

Witchfinder General (1968)

and Twice-Told Tales (1963)

On a lighter side, "There are a number of cooking books published by Price, who was said to be an excellent gourmet chef. The majority of these books were written with his wife, and their success lead to Price’s own cooking show, Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price. It ran for six weeks." Source

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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: English novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton was born on this day in 1803. Bulwer-Lytton's works sold and paid him well. He coined famous phrases like "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "dweller on the threshold". But, his most famous line was from "Paul Clifford" whose opening phrase was, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The entire opening goes like this: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose. 

The sentence is "filled with melodrama (a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization). It’s also become the archetypical Victorian-era trope (a convention or device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in a creative work)." Source

Edgar Allan Poe got in on the fun as well in his 1832 short story “The Bargain Lost,”:

"It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces."

There is actually a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually, that claims to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels."

If you delve further in the "Paul Clifford" novel, you will stumble upon this line as well: “This made the scene,—save that on a chair by the bedside lay a profusion of long, glossy, golden ringlets, which had been cut from the head of the sufferer when the fever had begun to mount upwards, but which, with a jealousy that portrayed the darling littleness of a vain heart, she had seized and insisted on retaining near her; and save that, by the fire, perfectly inattentive to the event about to take place within the chamber, and to which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses.”

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Edgar Allan Poe's THE RAVEN on This Day in History

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This Day in History: Edgar Allan's Poe's poem "The Raven" was published on this day in 1845, and it quickly became one the most famous poems of all time.

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe. The poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, "The Philosophy of Composition". The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.

"The Raven" was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem's literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

The poem has inspired numerous parodies in the 19th century, and since then we have seen tributes to the poem in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Tim Burton's Vincent, The Dead Zone, Short Circuit, 1989's Batman, The Crow, The Pagemaster, Dr Dolittle 2, The Simpsons, Night Gallery, The Addams Family, Gilmore Girls, Beetlejuice (cartoon), Duck Tales, Muppet Babies, Star Trek, Mama's Family, Teen Wolf, The 100...even The Expendables. It even made it to song. Queen recorded "Nevermore" on their second album Queen II, The Alan Parsons Project devoted an entire album to Poe, The Grateful Dead performed their own version of the Raven, and Lou Reed and Blues Travelers each paid respect to the poem as well. There is an annual science fiction convention called RavenCon and also a Raven Society. The Baltimore Raven's football team is named after the poem, as Poe lived and died in Baltimore.

The Raven, by E.A. Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

            This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

            Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

            Merely this and nothing more.

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

      Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

            ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

            With such name as “Nevermore.”

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

    Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

            She shall press, ah, nevermore!

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Glenn Beck reads The Raven

Killed by a Clown on This Day in History

This day in history: On this day (January 11) in 1854, William Snyder, 13, died in San Francisco, California, reportedly after a circus clown swung him around by his heels.

Clowns have had a dark and sordid history for quite some time, long before Stephen King's IT and John Wayne Gacy.

One early incident of a an evil clown comes form an Edgar Allan Poe short story called Hop-Frog. The title character, a person with dwarfism taken from his homeland, becomes the jester of a king particularly fond of practical jokes. Taking revenge on the king and his cabinet for the king's striking of his friend and fellow dwarf Trippetta, he dresses the king and his cabinet as orangutans for a masquerade. In front of the king's guests, Hop-Frog murders them all by setting their costumes on fire before escaping with Trippetta.

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Take note of the following written by Andrew Halliday back in 1863:

It is very possible that pantomimic (Clown) performances were practised at feasts or merry-makings among the Jews and ancient Egyptians, and we know that the early Greek drama largely partook of the nature of pantomime; but pantomime as a regularly organized theatrical entertainment was first introduced at Rome in the reign of Augustus. Indeed, that exalted personage is said to have been the inventor of it. It is certain, at any rate, that he patronized it most liberally, and that splendid pantomimes were produced in Rome during his reign. Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and most of the literary men of the day, frequented the theatres to witness them; and in some of their works we have criticisms of the pieces and of the actors who performed in them. There were two great rival pantomimists at this time in Rome, Bathyllus and Pylades. The former was originally a slave in the household of Maecenas; but his master was so delighted with the way in which he used to amuse his guests with mimicry and other antics at table that he gave him his liberty, and procured him an engagement at the theatre. Bathyllus was a grotesque and funny dog, who trode the lighter walks of pantomime; but Pylades was of a serious turn, and excelled in representing stories of a tragical kind. This Pylades actually wrote a treatise on his art, in which he declared that no man could be a good pantomimist (chironomist he was called, from the practice of expressing himself chiefly by the motion of the hand) who did not understand music, geometry, natural and moral philosophy, rhetoric, painting, and sculpture. 'All which the poets have feigned,' wrote Pylades, the clown, 'all which the mythologists have taught, all which the historians have recorded, must ever be present to his recollection.' The pantomimes in those days generally represented the loves or exploits of the gods and goddesses. The skill of the performers seems to have been perfectly wonderful. The snarling old cynic, Demetrius, after witnessing the pantomime of the 'Loves of Mars and Yenus ' (in the time of Nero), said, 'I hear all that you are doing, for it is not only my sight that you address, but your hands appear to 'Speak.' The people of Rome were quite mad at this time about pantomimes and pantomimists. When Nero requested Demetrius to name what gift he desired, the 'old gentleman asked for a pantomimist, and assigned as a reason that he had many neighbours of whose language his own people were ignorant, but that if he were in possession of one of the performers in the pantomime he need not provide himself with interpreters. The Emperor Augustus was extremely partial to the pantomimists. By his command they were exempted from that corporal punishment to which mimics and players were exposed, and they were indulged moreover by a release from certain civil prohibitions. This, however, caused the fraternity to presume upon their privileges. Bathyllus and Pylades became jealous of each other, and their partizans got up rows in the streets, and this caused some of their privileges to be withdrawn. Shortly after this Bathyllus died, and Pylades had the field all to himself, which made him intolerably conceited and overbearing. On one occasion, when a critic hissed him, he stopped in the middle of his performance and pointed the man out to the indignation of the audience. For this he was banished; but the populace soon brought him back again. Another rival to Pylades now appeared in one Hylas, a pupil of the deceased Bathyllus. Pylades and Hylas contended together in the same theatre, and the passages of wit between them, seem to have been exceedingly smart. In trying to represent the character of Agamemnon, in a particular line which termed him 'the great," Hylas stood up on his tiptoes. 'That,' said Pylades, 'is being tall, not great.' The audience called upon him to do it better himself, and when he came to the line he threw himself into an attitude of meditation, thus giving an idea of the first characteristic of a great man. Augustus became alarmed at these disputes, possibly thinking them a little too political, and calculated to excite the populace; but Pylades argued with him, and pointed out the advantage which the emperor gained, as long as the attention of the Romans could be diverted by pantomimes from the consideration of their political subjection. 'Sire,' he said, 'you are ungrateful: the best thing that can happen to you is that they should busy themselves about us.' Pylades was evidently better versed in statecraft than the emperor. Hylas seems to have been a very irritating rival of the old favourite. But he paid the penalty of his provocations at last. A partizan of Pylades caught him one night, and gave him a sound horsewhipping on his own door-step.

In the reign of Tiberius the quarrels of the players grew yet worse. Blood was shed in the theatres, and not only were the lives of some spectators sacrificed in the squabble, but several of the emperor's guards were killed. It was consequently proposed in the senate to subject the pantomimists to corporal punishment; but it was eventually considered disrespectful to the memory of Augustus to repeal his act of exemptions. Regulations, however, were made for reducing the enormous sums which had hitherto been granted for producing pantomimes, and some provisions were made for diminishing the arrogance of the performers. Senators were forbidden to enter their houses. Roman knights were not allowed to follow in their suite, and their exhibitions were prohibited elsewhere than in the theatres. But in the course of a few years the disorders arising from these theatrical performances increased to such a pitch that all the actors were banished from Italy.

They crept back again, however, in the reign of Caligula, and soon acquired all their old licence. Nero found much amusement in their squabbles, and often took part in them. On one occasion, when stones and benches were flying about in the theatre, Nero actively participated in the fray, and broke the praetor's head with a footstool. The pantomimists under this reign were once more the delicise (the delights) of the Romans. Again, however, they were banished; and again they were brought back at the demand of the Roman youth, who could not exist without their pantomimes. Under Domitian their performances became of a very profligate character. The great performer of these days, Paris, was accused of being too intimate with some of the high-blooded dames of Rome. He devised and acted a pantomime called the 'Amour of Leda,' which won great applause, chiefly, it would appear, because it was not very decent. The emperor's wife, Domitia, fell in love with this handsome clown and was divorced in consequence.

The Roman pantomimists were employed at this time not only upon the stage, but to amuse the guests at great houses during dinner. They appeared as carvers, and the flying knife which they brandished was directed with a different movement to each dish. He was considered to know little of his art who could not vary his flourish as he operated upon a hare, or a hen or a lark.

There were amateur pantomimists in those days. Stage-struck Roman youths paid large sums of money to be allowed to play, and their friends seem to have countenanced and supported them. Pliny tells a story of two youthful Romans of equestrian rank who died while exhibiting in the same pantomime. The scandals which arose in consequence of these unseemly proceedings led to the final suppression of the pantomimists by Trajan.

The pantomimes of the Romans were called Fabulae Atellenae, from Atella, the name of a town, where they were first introduced on a small scale. The actors wore masks and high-heeled shoes, furnished with brass or iron heels, which jingled as they danced. Latterly the fabulae were designed to admit of a good deal of horse play and knocking about, and it is not by any means improbable that the actors may have been in the habit of burning each other with red-hot pokers. It is very certain that a kick in a certain place was held to be a very good joke, and was always rapturously applauded. The Fabulae Atellanae and the Chironomists are therefore fairly entitled to be regarded as the first examples of the pantomime and its modern performers—clown, pantaloon, harlequin, and columbine.

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