69 years ago today,

...a not-yet-post-industrialized society freaked out over a fairly realistic broadcast of a dramatization of War Of The Worlds, confusingly adapted by Orson Welles from a story written 30 years before by H.G. Wells.

Although the audience had tuned in to hear the radio drama show Mercury Theatre On The Air, they apparently didn't get that this was part of the drama.

Keep in mind that this nation was largely made up of people who were not fully educated, and that coast-to-coast syndicated radio was brand-spanking-new. Newspapers were still the way news was passed, for the most part, carrying stories off the telegraph. Farces on the radio hadn't been foisted before. Agrarian types loaded up the shotguns, and city types got ready to get out of the city. (Car radios, a specialty item available for an extra $110, were almost unheard of at that time.)

This led to good ol' boys across the land speculating on how they'd show 'em, but good. That led, in its own way, to the excellent-yet-raw film Red Dawn, which compelled folks to consider how they would have dealt with a massive Communist invasion of North America, almost half a century later.