Blitz, one could argue Independence Day was a ripoff of War of the Worlds.
The novel takes place in the 19th century (pretty sure it was 19th and not early 20th) and was actually quite good. The original was cool for its time, but its really dated and almost worthy of MST3K status anymore. I've seen several previews of this as well, I think it has "winner" written all over it.
This is also the story that caused a nation-wide panic in 1938. Orson Welles performed it on the radio as if it were an actual newscast, and people all over the country thought the Martians really were attacking. There's a cool movie about it (think it was made for tv and not available on dvd) and if interested, you can
read more about it here.
There's also an odd little WotW site
here. It makes like there were real Martian invasions back then, like I said...odd.