on this day in 1938

"pip bip - choose Corrour" (hhgttg69) 10/30/2017 at 04:24 • Filed to: on this day

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an adaption of The war of the worlds was broadcast on radio, repotredly causing mass panic.

ttyymmnn > pip bip - choose Corrour 10/30/2017 at 09:34

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I have never heard the complete broadcast, though I did see a movie about the broadcast. And the book is fantastic. Also, Thunder Child is the most bad ass name for a warship ever.

user314 > ttyymmnn 10/30/2017 at 11:16

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I try to listen to either the original version, the LA Theater Works version (featuring John de Lancie, Meagan Fay, Jerry Hardin, Gates McFadden, Leonard Nimoy, Daryl Schultz, Armin Shimerman, Brent Spiner, Tom Virtue and Wil Wheaton, directed by John de Lancie) or the Jeff Wayne prog-rock version, on the 30th or 31st, and Orson’s is easily the creepiest. You know it’s a radio play, but set the right mood (dark and alone) and you start getting nervous as the reports come out of Grover’s Mills. By the time the aliens take New York, you begin to see how the show could have generated panic (though current thought says it wan’t nearly as wide-spread as the papers had said).

But Jeff Wayne’s has the best version of the Battle of the Thunderchild

The depiction of the Thunderchild on the cover is wrong, though. The ship illustrated is based on the pre-Dreadnought Canopus -class battleship, but from the book’s descriptions, it should have looked more like the Polyphemus, the only torpedo ram in RN service.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 10/30/2017 at 11:55

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I heard the recording and saw the movie. Really cool, and very creepy. I’d like to read a factually researched history about the reaction to that radio show.

I’m also wondering if YOutubers could do a version these days and see what havoc they can wreak.

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 10/30/2017 at 12:17

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The last thing the world needs is more fake news.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 10/30/2017 at 13:03

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Haha! Good point. However, my little window into the world of Youtubers tells me not wouldn’t add much to the world’s burden of fake news anyway.