It happened the day before Halloween, on Oct. 30, 1938, when millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured plays directed by, and often starring, Orson Welles. The performance that evening was an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the earth. But in adapting the book for a radio play, Welles made an important change: under his direction the play was written and performed so it would sound like news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique that, presumably, was intended to heighten the dramatic effect.As the play unfolded, dance music was interrupted a number of times by fake news bulletins reporting that a "huge flaming object" had dropped on a farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey. As members of the audience sat on the edge of their collective seat, actors playing news announcers, officials and other roles one would expect to hear in a news report, described the landing of an invasion force from Mars and the destruction of the United States. The broadcast also contained a number of explanations that it was all a radio play, but if members of the audience missed a brief explanation at the beginning, the next one didn't arrive until 40 minutes into the program.
As it listened to this simulation of a news broadcast, created with voice acting and sound effects, a portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play. People were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact.
People in these days are accustomed to often unbelievable nonsense on television so if the radio war of the world is air now, it is not enough to believe. However, if I put myself in the shoes of listeners who turned in 1939 to The Mercury Theater on the Air's performance of The War of the Worlds, it might be one of the big issues.
I imagine that I am sitting in living room and listening radio.
I start to get uncomfortable when listening; "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed...Someone's crawling out of the hollow top...The whole field's caught fire...It's coming this way. About twenty yards to my right—".
I don’t know whether I running out to the street or cry because I convinced that it’s the end of the world. Because
At first he was deny the issue but finally he abandoned his long denial that he had fathered a child during an affair with a campaign aide and admitted that he is the father of the almost 2-year-old girl. This is the most striking element of the story.
