Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
H.G. Wells’s first published book was a biology textbook (in 1893). (Source)
Wells also wrote two concise works on the history of the world: An Outline of World History (1920) and A Short History of the World (1922). (Source)
Wells was, for a time, a passionate socialist (though not a Marxist), an outspoken believer in "utopia," and a member of Britain’s famous socialist club, the Fabian Society. He wrote many nonfiction works expressing these views. (Source)
Wells actually fought for control over the Fabian Society against another famous author, playwright George Bernard Shaw. (Source)
A portion of H.G. Wells’s famous book, War of the Worlds, once created a national panic in the United States. On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles, a popular radiobroadcaster read a script over the air based on the episode from the book in which the Martians first land and begin their invasion of earth. Millions of Americans believed a real Martian invasion was underway. (Source)
Wells is often credited with imagining various scientific advances before they happened. Most famously, he "predicted" the atomic bomb in a 1914 work of fiction called The World Set Free. (Source)