From Nonsense for Old and Young by Eugene Field, 1901.

The moon is actually bigger than it looks from down here on Earth, as we learn in La Dix-Neuvième Caravane des Dominicains d'Arcueil, 1894.

It's only funny if the man in the moon laughs too, right?  (Thanks, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt!)  From The Literary Digest, 1890.

From Punch magazine, 1866.

It turns out that the man in the moon is actually a club-wielding policeman, as we learn in St. Nicholas magazine, 1876.

Here's a man in the moon with a Mona Lisa smile, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1898.  Recall our previous proof that the Mona Lisa's facial features correspond to the lunar landscape.

It turns out that the man in the moon is actually a little girl called Hippety-Hop (who suffered from what we now call nervous leg syndrome) who just kept going.  From St. Nicholas magazine, 1876.  To our eye, the little girl transformed into a Kanji character.

The Milky Way is composed of smoke from cigars puffed by celestial bodies, as we see in The Pharmaceutical Era, 1887.