
Victorians were obsessed with the moon - hoffmannesque
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/why-were-the-victorians-so-obsessed-with-the-moon/
======
jbottoms
One of the biggest reasons for the interest is that the first telescope was
developed that could see birds and people on the moon. That would be like
television shows every night.
[http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax](http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax)

------
empath75
Interesting article but doesn’t really support the headline. You could
probably collect a bunch of still lifes and ask why Victorians were obsessed
with bowls of fruit.

~~~
iamcurious
Indeed, why were they obsessed with bowls of fruit?

~~~
davemp
I can't easily find any sources to support this, but AFAIK the reason so many
old photos/paintings have fruit bowls in the background is a display of
wealth. Because fruit was harder to come by, having them showed you were doing
well. People would even rent fruit bowls for portraits. The practice is kind
of similar to renting expensive cars for music videos nowadays I guess.

~~~
timoth3y
> People would even rent fruit bowls for portraits.

I find it kind of refreshing to know that this kind of behavior did not start
with Instagram influencers.

------
nwah1
Light pollution in modern cities is truly a shame, and I wonder if we can even
do anything about it.

If self-driving cars become universal, will this mean we can do away with
headlights and most streetlights? We'd need to actually ban human drivers
before that point. Seems quite far fetched.

