Today in 1833, the first issue of the The New York Sun was published.
The Sun first gained notice for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, a fabricated story of life and civilization on the Moon which the paper falsely attributed to British astronomer John Herschel and never retracted. The hoax featured man-bats creatures named the "Vespertilio-homo" that inhabited the moon and built temples.
Steven Lubar in InfoCulture:
New technology, in fact, came along after [italics mine] the renaissance of the newspaper. The New York Sun was the first “penny paper,” featuring sensational stories aimed at mass audience… it stretched the limit of its hand presses with its 10,000 copies a day. (When a series of stories announcing the discovery of life on the moon appeared, it sold 20,000 copies in a day; by then it had switched to a steam-powered press).
Benjamin Day, its publisher, bragged about its power: “Since the Sun began to shine upon the citizens of New York, there had been a great and decided change in the condition of the laboring classes, and the mechanics. Now every individual, from the rich aristocrat who lolls in his carriage to the humble laborer who wields a broom in the streets, reads the Sun.”…
Between 1828 and 1840 the number of daily newspapers doubled from 852 to 1,631 and total circulation increased from 68 million to 195 million. More daily newspapers were printed in the United States than in the rest of the world.