Radio was still a fairly new medium when a gifted dramatist named Orson Welles was staging plays for listeners who tuned in to his program. He decided to adapt a novel by H.G. Wells for his radio audience. The book "War of the Worlds" depicted a Martian invasion of England. Welles switched it around and had his writer adapt the radio play so that it described an alien invasion of New Jersey.
Many listeners who tuned in were not in on the joke, they thought the invasion was real, that it was really happening. Bedlam ensued. William Elliott Hazelgrove tells us what occurred and how Welles probably created this deception on purpose. Was it all just colossal arrogance? You decide.
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