Made in New Jersey

Radio was one of the wonders of pre-World War II America. Families and individuals tuned into their favorite radio comedies and dramas every night beginning in the early 1930s when network radio came of age. New Jersey was the venue for one of radio’s most-famed broadcasts – an episode of the Mercury Theater of the Air on October 30, 1938, featuring an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel, War of the Worlds. Orson Welles and the cast of the Mercury Theater created realistic bulletins about an attack of Martians in Grover’s Mill in Mercer County. As a result, thousands of New Jerseyans believed they were under alien attack. Today, a monument in Grover’s Mill marks the spot of the fictional landing.