8. The Accidental Hoax That Caused a Panic
Other pranks and hoaxes on this list were deliberate, but here is one that came about quite by accident. In the 1930s, the Columbia Broadcasting System’s radio network hosted The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was a live radio drama series created by director and producer Orson Welles, that presented classic literary works.
On the evening of Sunday, October 30th, 1938, Welles directed and narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as a Halloween special. It ended up causing widespread panic when many listeners mistook the radio play about a fictional alien invasion for a news broadcast describing an actual alien invasion.