Sheikh Mansour asserts: Life on the Moon
Manchester City have made a truly out-of-this-world assertion, quite why remains unclear.
New York in 1835 was a rapidly growing city, with congested thoroughfares, sprawling suburbs, and rampant disease life was chaotic, life was exciting, amd life was dangerous for the 300,000 residents.
In August that year, The New York Sun published a series of articles which fantastically gripped the city. Sir John Herschel, a well known astronomer of the age, had discovered — with the help of new, cutting-edge, “hydro-oxygen magnifiers” — life on the Moon.
His words bought these discoveries to life for enthralled readers:
Of animals, he classified nine species of mammalia, and five of ovipara. Among the former is a small kind of rein-deer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear, and the biped beaver. The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than in its destitution of a tail, and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms like a human being, and moves with an easy gliding motion.
— GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES Lately Made, The Sun, Thursday, August 27, 1835
The articles succeeded in boosting the numbers of subscribers for the paper to record highs, they later quietly announced in a future edition that it had, in fact, all been a hoax.
Quite how the Manchester City PR team believe they can label the arbitration hearing pasting that was handed to them by the Premier League as a success, only they know.
With a quick press release and their fantastic, out-of-this-world storytelling was being parroted by journalists, newspapers, and twitter aficionados around the world, from the wide boulevards of Abu Dhabi to grid-like streets which have replaced the congested thoroughfares of 1835 New York.
The New York Sun is said to have emailed the Manchester City version of events to it’s readership community on the Moon, which was received by many using the now ubiquitous “hydro-oxygen magnifiers”, with rapturous celebration, causing a true Blue Moon.