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Oct 30, 1938: Orson Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds on the radio and supposedly sent America into a panic. The panic was mostly a myth. Welles was 23 and ran a radio drama series on CBS. For the night before Halloween, his team adapted H.G. Wells's novel about a Martian invasion. Instead of telling it as a story, they made it sound like a regular music program being interrupted by breaking news bulletins. Reporters described a strange object landing on a farm in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Then came Martian war machines, heat rays, and the destruction of New York. The show announced that it was fiction at the beginning, at the middle break, and at the end. The next morning, newspapers ran huge headlines about mass hysteria, with people fleeing their homes and flooding police stations with calls. Some listeners really did get scared. But most of the country wasn't even listening. The most popular show in that time slot was on another network, and Welles's program had a small audience. Researchers later found the stories of nationwide panic were wildly exaggerated. Part of the reason was business. Newspapers were losing advertising money to radio and were happy to run stories making radio look dangerous and irresponsible. Welles held a press conference looking apologetic. The publicity made him famous. Three years later he made Citizen Kane.