"A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What's that? There's a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they're turning into flame!"
- Eyewitness at Grovers Mill, NJ, October 30, 1938
It turns out that lots of things went down in 1938; for instance, a martian landing in the very nice town of Princeton, New Jersey! We went to Princeton because it's in between JFK Airport (where Warren patiently waited curbside for well over an hour while I was stuck in traffic) and Philadelphia (where my sister lives), but more specifically because it contains a park that contains a monument of the 1938 Martian Landing Site. I mean, with a claim like that, who wouldn't want to see it with their own two eyes (strictly a rhetorical question)?
It was pouring. I mean, like, there was so much water that we waded knee-deep through this windy faux forest that led to a lake that was also flooding and a tiny covered pavilion where a kid's failed birthday party(complete with a disgruntled looking clown making balloon animals for forlorn kids)was underway and, and here is the good part, this:
It's a small monument, entirely shielded from human eyes on one side by a series of large bushes. But its glory couldn't be hidden from our eagle eyes. "This looks about right," Warren said as we waded deeper into the swamp (aka, former grassy knoll). And it was.
It was ("it" now being the martian landing) also one of the best hoaxes ever played by the mass media on its mass audience. Here's what Roadside America has to say about the whole hubbub: "In 1938, scorching annihilation from outer space was still a relatively new concept to the average Joe. Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater ensemble put on one of the world's great hoaxes when they broadcast a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds the night before Halloween, October 30th. Twelve million people heard the fake 'live news' broadcast, and many were convinced an attack from Mars was underway. The Martian landings were centered around the little-known but real town of Grovers Mill, near Princeton."
And that, my friends, is why I <3 america.="" br="">
This one goes out to you, the heroes, a song I could not stop humming the whole adventure:
"Nothing Ever Happens On Mars" from Waiting for Guffman
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