War of the Worlds

On October 30, 1938, a wave of hysteria gripped listeners of a radio broadcast in which an announcer described, live, the landing and attack on Earth of spaceships from Mars.
It was "The War of the Worlds," a radio drama staged by Orson Welles based on the science fiction novel by H. G. Wells.
Thousands of people in New Jersey and New York abandoned their homes and drove west in an attempt to escape virtual Martians, while thousands more bombarded police and firefighters with calls.
The image shows the monument commemorating the broadcast, placed at the site of the fake landing (click on the image to enlarge).

Here you can listen to the broadcast itself in MP3 format.
As you can hear, the program was well-crafted. At first, it simulated a pop music broadcast, occasionally interrupted by announcements and interviews about what was happening. Gradually, the description of events became more and more pressing and dramatic. The moment the Martians attack, screams are heard, and the broadcast abruptly cuts off, leaving a gap of a few seconds, is a dramatic coup (around minute 17).
Today, we can understand why the panic broke out. CBS inserted an announcement warning that it was a radio drama only once in the 55-minute broadcast, and anyone who tuned in without hearing the opening introduction was instantly drawn into the drama.

The funny thing is that Welles himself hadn't even remotely anticipated his audience's reaction; he hadn't intended to create a prank, as is sometimes believed, and after the broadcast, he went to a nearby theater to attend an evening rehearsal for a show, only learning of the uproar his performance had caused the next day.
Moreover, Welles thought the adaptation was boring and wouldn't have proposed it, except that he was forced to use it because he found himself without any other interesting material available.

It was the scale of the reaction that was astonishing. Six minutes after we went on the air, the houses were emptying and the churches were filling; From Nashville to Minneapolis, people were chanting and tearing their clothes in the streets. We began to realize, as we were destroying New Jersey, that we had underestimated the extent of America's streak of madness.
Orson Welles

In fact, it all happened in a matter of minutes because, if we continued listening, it would have been clear that it was a story with details such as the destruction of cities and other similar things.
To be honest, the writers should have at least been cautious. It wasn't the first program of its kind. In 1926, a fake report by Ronald Knox on a riot in London was broadcast by the BBC, creating a certain amount of panic in the city (but English panic is nothing compared to American panic).

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