EP 101: The 1938 War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast

Welcome back for Season Eleven!

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing War of the Worlds. And not necessarily the novel, The War of the Worlds, written by H.G. Wells, which is about aliens from Mars invading the Earth. No, more specifically, we are discussing an incident that occurred the day before Halloween in 1938 when actor Orson Welles (no relation to author H.G. Wells) read aloud an adaptation of The War of the Worlds on live radio. Innocent enough, right? HOWEVER, Welles delivered this adaptation of the story in a “breaking-news”, news-reporting alert type method. So when he told of Martians landing on Earth, Americans took him seriously. When this radio program - in the style of a news broadcast - played audio from people who appeared to be live witnesses to aliens landing on the Earth and using a heat ray to burn up American citizens, listeners went nuts. Americans became so alarmed that the results of this broadcast led to traffic jams, an outrageous amount of calls to local law enforcement, and a significant fleeing from the site of the alleged invasion, New Jersey. Following the incident, when it was realized that this had all just been a fictional tale (that all of these witnesses had actually been paid actors), there was complete outrage directed at the radio program for what many perceived to be a deceptive delivery of the tale of the War of the Worlds.

It is worth noting though that more modern historians believe that this was not quite as large-scale as was originally reported. Many believe now that the mass hysteria resulting from this incident was actually grossly exaggerated by the media. But regardless, this whole thing - however big or small - was a hot mess.

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