On the evening of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as adapted by Howard Koch. It became a landmark in broadcast history, provoking continuing thought about media responsibility, social psychology, and civil defense. For a brief time, as many as one million people throughout the country believed that Martians had invaded the Earth, beginning with Grover's Mill, New Jersey.