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Highlights for October 30
The Martians are coming! The Martians are coming! Well, they are not coming today, but they did arrive in the United States--Grovers Mill, New Jersey to be exact--in 1938. Widespread panic gripped the country. Police across the country were swamped with calls from frightened citizens, and people in the New Jersey area made plans to flee to a safer place. All this because of a radio program, which was only intended to entertain its listeners. The broadcast, not the Halloween prank that Welles intended, resulted in nationwide panic.
It was eight o'clock on October 30, 1938, Halloween Eve, when CBS broadcast Orson Welles with the Mercury Theater on the Air and their updated version of H.G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. At the time, Mercury Theater on the Air was not a very popular radio program. Most people listened to The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show, which featured a ventriloquist and his dummy. But similar to the way people flip channels with a remote control during a lull in the action of a television program, back then people would spin the radio dial to find something more interesting. It is speculated that in this manner a large number of people tuned in to The War of the Worlds late, and did not hear Orson Welles introduce the show. These people thought they were listening to actual news bulletins interrupting a music program, but the music and the bulletins were actually part of The War of the Worlds.
The listeners were being entertained by Ramon Raquello and his orchestra when the show was interrupted by a special report from Intercontinental Radio News. The bulletin was to let people know that scientists had noticed explosions on the surface of Mars, and that something was flying towards the earth at an incredible speed. After the announcement the music began again. Then another news report came on. This time to inform the audience that a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite had fallen to earth at Grovers Mill.
At Grovers Mill it was realized that the object was not a meteorite. Eventually, a huge creature with a drooling V-shaped mouth emerged from the object, zapped the people dead, and torched the field with its heat-ray. An army of police and soldiers numbering around seven thousand and armed with machine guns and rifles, surrounded the creature, but all except one hundred and twenty were killed.
Reports poured in of more sightings of Martian spaceships. New York, Buffalo, Chicago and St. Louis were all invaded. The Martians destroyed communication links, railroads and bridges. Poisonous clouds of black smoke drifted everywhere. People were dying wherever the Martians landed. The country seemed lost. The War of the Worlds broadcast terrified people from coast to coast. Families fled their homes, covering their mouths with handkerchiefs trying not to breathe the harmful black gas. People packed into churches. Roads leading out of cities were jammed with cars. People across the nation thought they were going to die. It is estimated that over six million people listened to that broadcast, and close to two million thought it was a news bulletin.
2000, Comedian, television host, Steve Allen dies of a heart attack
Steve Allen, the bespectacled pioneer of late-night television and a comedian-actor-author who wrote more than 4,000 songs, including "This May Be the Start of Something Big," has died of an apparent heart attack. He was 78. He died Monday night at the Encino home of his son, Bill Allen, relatives said Tuesday. His wife of 46 years, Jayne Meadows, rushed from their nearby home. "He said he was a little tired after dinner," Bill Allen said. "He went to relax, peacefully, and never reawakened."
Besides starting the "Tonight Show," Allen starred as the King of Swing in the 1956 movie "The Benny Goodman Story." He appeared in Broadway shows, on soap operas, wrote newspaper columns and more than 50 books, commented on wrestling broadcasts, made 40 record albums and wrote plays and a television series that featured "guest appearances" by Sigmund Freud, Clarence Darrow and Aristotle. Allen is survived by his wife and children, 11 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. When an interviewer asked Allen in 1985 how he managed to do so many creative things, he replied: "I never asked myself that question. It would be like asking how my hair grows. The mystery of creativity is just that: It is a mystery, and particularly mysterious to me about myself."
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-Mail me.
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