Posted on 10/29/2023 6:23:23 PM PDT by DallasBiff
As the clock struck 8 p.m. in New York City on the night of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles stood on a podium inside a Madison Avenue radio studio. The baby-faced, 23-year-old theatrical star, who had graced the cover of Time magazine months earlier, prepared to direct 10 actors and a 27-piece orchestra for the Columbia Broadcasting System’s weekly “Mercury Theatre on the Air” program
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
Just basically our way of saying ‘Boo!’.....
rosebud
The Day the Earh Stood Still
This is but one example of how stupid and gullible the general public was back then. I hardly think those qualities have decreased since.
Every one was on edge because of the World situation.
Were they that gullible?
If it is a myth that people panicked, then aren’t we the gullible ones for believing the myth?
Good point. Good article. From the same:
In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles’s 1938 script for Radio Quito in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez’s girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the ground.
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