A Really Frightening Halloween
October 28, 2009 by Chip Wood
The night before Halloween was really frightening 71 years ago.
It was on Oct. 30, 1938 that Orson Welles produced a radio drama for CBS called The War of the Worlds. The studio duplication of a live newscast was so realistic that thousands of people did not realize the program was a play. Instead, they honestly believed that Martians had landed in a field in northern New Jersey and were dispatching everything the U.S. military sent against them.
Recordings of that original broadcast (available through most public libraries) sound convincing to this day. Check one out and see if you don’t agree.
And here’s some less frightening news: Statisticians tell us that Nov. 1 is the best day of the year to purchase stocks. This is probably because September and October are historically the worst two months of the year for the stock market.
Thus, they form a bottom from which the following six months, starting with November, have got to be better. Will that be true again this year? Time will tell.
—Chip Wood
