Editor’s note: David Acord, author of “When Mars Attacked: Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds and the Radio Broadcast That Changed America Forever,” has graciously shared his thoughts on the infamous broadcast of Oct. 30, 1938 with Wellesnet in a four-part series. His eBook is available though amazon.com
By DAVID ACORD
After The War of the Worlds broadcast sparked a nationwide panic in October 1938, experts set about trying to figure out why so many people believed (for a few hours, anyway) that the country had been invaded by aliens from Mars. Over the years, consensus of opinion has settled on two basic reasons: the psychological turmoil and domestic unease brought about by the severity of the Great Depression coupled with the fear of another world war (prompted by Hitler’s saber-rattling in Europe).
During my research for my new book about the panic, When Mars Attacked, I came across another possible influence on listener’s behavior – more subtle, perhaps, but just as interesting as the other two. As it turns out, Americans in 1938 found themselves distracted by another curious phenomenon: meteors.
A number of large fireballs were observed in the skies during the spring and summer of 1938, especially in the northeast. On April 12 a “brilliant fireball” passed over upstate New York near Rochester, bluish-white in color and accompanied by a loud hissing sound. A meteor “resembling a tremendous skyrocket” was seen near Worcester, Mass. on June 7. A few weeks later, on July 26, another huge meteor was reported back in upstate New York, this one near Syracuse. At the time, it was the largest space rock ever observed by the Hayden Planetarium; one newspaper report said the meteor “seemed about half the size of the moon.” An employee of the planetarium estimated it was traveling at a rate of anywhere from 10 to 30 miles per second. “It looked like a Roman candle or a rocket with a brilliant fiery exhaust,” he said.
But by far the biggest sighting of the summer occurred in tiny Chicora, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, on June 24. A massive 450 metric-ton meteor exploded in the skies over the rural community in the early evening hours and made headlines across the country. According to one news account, a farmer “heard a sound like that of an airplane directly over his house and accompanied by a gust of wind. Almost simultaneously there arose a dreadful commotion in his poultry yard. The next day a heavy, curious stone about the size of a clenched fist was picked up in that same poultry yard. Subsequent searches revealed a similar object, about half the size of the first, a short distance away. Also the farmer had to call the local veterinarian to treat one of his cows who had a curious laceration in her flesh and was extremely nervous.” The explosion was so loud that it “shook houses and broke a few windows,” another newspaper claimed. “Flaming Meteor Scares Thousands in Pittsburgh,” blared one headline.
Granted, it’s a bit of a stretch, but news of these meteor sightings may have filtered into listeners’ subconscious in the months leading up to Welles’ broadcast. Bright lights in the sky are unsettling; so are 450-ton rocks that fall from the skies. A fiction writer working on a novel about life in America in 1938 would have been hard pressed to come up with a better (or more obvious) metaphor to illustrate the underlying tension that permeated the country. Had Orson Welles possessed supernatural powers, he might have conjured the fireballs himself as a clever way to unnerve the public. After all, these were the same people who would soon be listening to his radio program. What better way to prepare for The War of the Worlds than with an out-of-this-world light show? And what better way to coax his audience to look up into the dark heavens and wonder what strange objects might fall from the sky next…say, the night before Halloween?
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