“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligence greater than man’s…across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” So began actor Orson Welles’ chilling Mercury Theater radio performance on October 30, 1938 that Martians were invading, leading terrified listeners to believe that Earth was under attack by hostile aliens.
Welles’ chilling performance was a dramatization of the H.G. Wells science-fiction classic, “The War of the Worlds,” and was part of a weekly series of dramatic broadcasts created in collaboration with the Mercury Theatre on the Air for CBS, according to a transcript of the program.
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