30th October

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.

13th August

Annie Oakley was born on this day in 1860. If you think the recent Olympic shooting was good, you should have seen this girl. 'Little Miss Sureshot' could hit the thin edge of a playing card at 30 paces. Nobody messed with Annie!

In other news ...

... and 28 years later, John Logie Baird was born. The Scots are famous inventors and none more so than this bloke. Having designed the world's first television set, he then went on to star in one of the small screen's most lovable cartoon series. For legal reasons, of course, the name had to be changed slightly, so somebody in Head Office came out with the name Yogi Bear.

They kept in character, though, because he certainly was smarter than the average bear; or human being, come to think of it!