Today Is...Radio Play Of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds

As a literary masterpiece, The War of the Worlds takes readers on an exhilarating journey as Earth is invaded by Martians who have travelling billions of miles from their home planet armed with giant death machines but are foiled by our pesky bacteria.
The War of the Worlds radio broadcast was produced by Orson Welles, and to make it more interesting he based the style on a earlier BBC 2 play where it was presented as a series of news bulletins and interrupted regular programming to create an illusion of reality.
But what makes this broadcast even more fascinating is how people reacted to it. The broadcast caused widespread panic, as many listeners believed that the news bulletins were real and that aliens were actually invading the Earth. People ran to the streets in terror, and emergency services were flooded with calls.
The first few bulletins interrupted a program of live music and are relatively calm reports of unusual explosions on Mars followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unknown object falling on a farm in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.
The crisis escalates dramatically when a 'correspondent' reporting live describes creatures emerging from an alien spacecraft and incinerating local officials with a heat ray and then updates detailing the beginning of a devastating alien invasion and the military's futile efforts to stop it.
What convinced people mostly was the lack of advertisements which only happens during very rare significant events and such was the ensuing panic that a disclaimer was hastily added to the end of the programme to assure listeners that Martians hadn't actually invaded.
The BBC did try something similar many years later with a Haunted House Halloween Special but all it did was generate thousands of complaints to the BBC so not quite so exciting.