Radio Quito's War of the Worlds riot

FEB 12 1949

Radio Quito broadcast a Spanish-language adaptation of The War of the Worlds staged as breaking news bulletins interrupting a music programme, announcing that Ecuador was under Martian attack. Listeners believed it; when the station admitted the deception, the panic turned to fury and a crowd burned down the building, which also housed the newspaper El Comercio. At least six people were killed. It is the clearest case of a broadcast hoax producing lethal consequences. Death-toll figures vary between six and twenty across sources; at least six is the conservative figure. This, not the 1938 Welles broadcast, is the War of the Worlds adaptation that actually killed people.