Monday, October 30, 2006
This Day in American History
On this day in 1938 Orson Welles broadcast over the radio his version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and allegedly caused a nationwide panic among a very few Americans. I've listened to the thing; it has about a 5 minute period ten minutes in when it's all reports of strange machines and then violence at Grover's Corner, New Jersey. Then it tells about our struggle and eventual triumph over the machines in a way that could not fool anyone into thinking this was real time news coverage. So you would have had to then turn off the radio at the right time and take to the streets to be panicked, and that just goes against human nature. I think the panic part of the story is mostly hype.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 6:52 AM 
