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Creative Pranks and Hoaxes in History

Khalid Elhassan February 2, 2020 33 min

8. The Accidental Hoax That Caused a Panic

An illustration of a Martian fighting machine hovering over Londoners in Regent Street and Piccadilly, from a 1906 edition of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Imgur

Other pranks and hoaxes on this list were deliberate, but here is one that came about quite by accident. In the 1930s, the Columbia Broadcasting System’s radio network hosted The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was a live radio drama series created by director and producer Orson Welles, that presented classic literary works.

On the evening of Sunday, October 30^th, 1938, Welles directed and narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as a Halloween special. It ended up causing widespread panic when many listeners mistook the radio play about a fictional alien invasion for a news broadcast describing an actual alien invasion.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.