H.G. Wells gained fame with his first major fiction work: The Time
Machine in 1895. Soon after the publication of this book, Wells
followed with The Island of Dr. Moreau (1895), The Invisible Man
(1897), and perhaps his most famous popular work:
The War of the Worlds (1898).

Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio broadcast, based on The War
of the Worlds, caused a panic in the Eastern United States on the
30th of October, 1938. In Newark, New Jersey, all the occupants of a
block of flats left their homes with wet towels round their heads and
in Harlem a congregation fell to its knees. Welles, who first considered
the show silly, was shaken by the panic he had unleashed and
promised that he would never do anything like it again.