War of the Worlds
From waroftheworlds.org: "On October 30, 1938 young Orson Welles and his newly formed Mercury Theater group, many of whom would go on to become Hollywood stars, broadcast their radio adaptation of H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds." At 8PM that Sunday evening, with programming interrupted with "news bulletins" (a first), an alarmed audience heard tat Martians had begun an invasion of earth in an out-of-the-way place called Grover's Mill, NJ. The worlds has never been the same.
The "Panic Broadcast", as it came to e known, changed broadcast history, social psychology, civil defense and set a standard for provocative entertainment. It is the progenitor of the U.S. Civil Defense program, it was the source of the first academic study (by Princeton) of mass hysteria and broadcasters have studied it for 60 years as a classic of effective communication. Approximately 12 million people in the U.S. heard the broadcast; perhaps a million people believed a serious Martian invasion was underway. The aftermath even played a part in global politics when Adolf Hitler used it as an example of U.S. political weakness."
