Iconic science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, which describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars.
The 1938 radio broadcast, 40 years later—on Mercury Theatre on the Air—an episode of intense American radio drama which simulated new bulletins of an actual invasion from Mars—was (probably deliberately) so realistic that many listeners believed an invasion was actually in–progress, causing possibly America’s most notable example of (at least partial) mass hysteria.