War of the Worlds – Ingliando

On this day, the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast live at 8:00 p.m. over the CBS Radio Network, a Halloween episode of “The War of the Worlds”, directed and narrated by the filmmaker and actor Orson Welles. The episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel and is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was actually taking place. Because of its realistic breaking news format and the lack of commercial interruptions, the fictional report of a devastating alien invasion and the fall of New York City caused a certain amount of panic among the programme’s listeners. There was widespread media outrage in the hours that followed and Orson Welles was obliged to apologise at a hastily-called news conference the following morning. The broadcast, however, brought Welles to the attention of the general public and gave him the reputation of an innovative storyteller and ‘trickster‘.