The 1835 “moon hoax” that turned fake news into big business (opens in new tab)

[In the early 1830s], a brash young printer named Benjamin Day launched a bold economic experiment: the one-cent Sun. A veteran of New York’s printer’s row, Day had spent several years working as a compositor at the New-York Evening Post, where he met fellow compositor Dave Ramsey, who dreamed of starting an affordable daily newspaper. At the time, the standard price for a newspaper was six cents — roughly the cost of a pint of whiskey or a quarter-pound of bacon — and the most successful wee...