Moon Men, Giants, and Burning Bodies: Inside the New York Sun’s 19th-Century Hoaxes

In the 1800s, one newspaper helped convince the world that civilization existed on the Moon, giants once ruled America, people could burst into flames without warning, mermaids swam the South Pacific, and entire cities lay frozen beneath polar ice. That paper was the New York Sun.
In this episode of The Strange History Podcast, we explore what really happened to the New York Sun—how it rose to fame through sensational reporting, why its most famous hoaxes worked so well, and how 19th-century readers learned to trust print more than proof. From the Great Moon Hoax to spontaneous human combustion, this is the strange true history of how newspapers once shaped reality itself—and why belief traveled faster than verification in the age before fact-checking.
Perfect for fans of weird history, media scandals, forgotten hoaxes, Victorian mysteries, and true stories that sound too strange to be real… but were printed anyway.


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