Orson Welles frightened everybody today in 1938 when he produced and starred in a radio play based on H G Wells' The War of the Worlds. Even though the item was given plenty of publicity as fiction in advance, thousands of New Yorkers panicked and jammed roads and subways trying to leave the cities before the Martians arrived.
The knock-on effect was that when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that we were at war with Germany ten months later, everybody assumed it was a hoax and did nothing.
In other news ...
The first television personality appeared on the screen today at the workshop of John Logie Baird in 1925. His name was William Taynton and the show was called Britain's Got Taynton.
