On this day exactly one hundred years ago, Orson Welles was born, so it seems appropriate to write about the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, in which Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth that was based on H. G. Wells’s 19th century novel The War of the Worlds. Supposedly up to twelve million people listening at home believed the United States was being attacked by aliens in the little-known but real town of Grover’s Mill, near Princeton, New Jersey. This fictitious non-event, which secured Orson Welles’ fame, is memorialized with a “Martian Landing Site” monument that was installed in 1988 in the town’s Van Nest Park. The eight-foot high 3D bronze relief depicts a dramatic Mr. Welles talking into a microphone while a family listens in terror by their radio. At the top is a sinister-looking Martian machine, a metallic tentacled walking tripod because “flying saucers” weren’t invented until 1947. The back of the plaque is inscribed with a description of the evening. Unfortunately there is no mention of Orson Welles being the inventor of modern-day trolling.
Martian Landing Site
