Editor's Note: This story was originally published for the 75th anniversary in 2019. Church bells rang, people stopped each other on the streets and phone lines were jammed. "Did you hear the news? The invasion has happened.
" It was Saturday afternoon, June 3, 1944, and the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France had just been announced. All major radio networks, including NBC, which broadcast on KROC in Rochester, interrupted programming to carry the news. There was only one problem: The news was incorrect.
ADVERTISEMENT At 3:44 p.m., five minutes after the invasion alert went out over the news wires from London, a "kill" message was sent over those same lines.
The announcement of the invasion had been sent by mistake by a woman practicing on a teletype machine in the London office of the Associated Press. So, the excitement over, people in Rochester went back to their business on the home front. Some prepared for commencement exercises: Lourdes High School would graduate 35 seniors the next day.
In Goodhue County, though, all rural school graduations were canceled due to gas rationing and a planting season delayed by recent heavy rains, according to the Post-Bulletin. In New Jersey that Saturday afternoon, as part of an exhibition game, Navy Lt. j.
g. Jim Punderson, of Rochester, dropped baseballs from an airship to New York Giants players waiting below. By Monday, June 5, the excitement over the false news alert had died down.
The "Ration Roundup" column in the Post-Bulleti.
