LOCH NESS MONSTER SIGHTED:

May 2, 1933

Although accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland's Loch Ness date back
1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting
makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier related an
account of a local couple who claimed to have seen "an enormous animal rolling
and plunging on the surface." The story of the "monster" (a moniker chosen by
the Courier editor) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending
correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a ý20,000 reward for capture of
the beast.Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume
of fresh water in Great Britain; the body of water reaches a depth of nearly 800
feet and a length of about 23 miles. Scholars of the Loch Ness Monster find a
dozen references to "Nessie" in Scottish history, dating back to around A.D.
500, when local Picts carved a strange aquatic creature into standing stones
near Loch Ness. The earliest written reference to a monster in Loch Ness is a
7th-century biography of Saint Columba, the Irish missionary who introduced
Christianity to Scotland. In 565, according to the biographer, Columba was on
his way to visit the king of the northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped
at Loch Ness to confront a beast that had been killing people in the lake.
Seeing a large beast about to attack another man, Columba intervened, invoking
the name of God and commanding the creature to "go back with all speed." The
monster retreated and never killed another man.In 1933, a new road was completed
along Loch Ness' shore, affording drivers a clear view of the loch. After an
April 1933 sighting was reported in the local paper on May 2, interest steadily
grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the beast on land,
crossing the shore road. Several British newspapers sent reporters to Scotland,
including London's Daily Mail, which hired big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell
to capture the beast. After a few days searching the loch, Wetherell reported
finding footprints of a large four-legged animal. In response, the Daily Mail
carried the dramatic headline: "MONSTER OF LOCH NESS IS NOT LEGEND BUT A FACT."
Scores of tourists descended on Loch Ness and sat in boats or decks chairs
waiting for an appearance by the beast. Plaster casts of the footprints were
sent to the British Natural History Museum, which reported that the tracks were
that of a hippopotamus, specifically one hippopotamus foot, probably stuffed.
The hoax temporarily deflated Loch Ness Monster mania, but stories of sightings
continued.A famous 1934 photograph seemed to show a dinosaur-like creature with
a long neck emerging out of the murky waters, leading some to speculate that
"Nessie" was a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs. The aquatic
plesiosaurs were thought to have died off with the rest of the dinosaurs 65
million years ago. Loch Ness was frozen solid during the recent ice ages,
however, so this creature would have had to have made its way up the River Ness
from the sea in the past 10,000 years. And the plesiosaurs, believed to be
cold-blooded, would not long survive in the frigid waters of Loch Ness. More
likely, others suggested, it was an archeocyte, a primitive whale with a
serpentine neck that is thought to have been extinct for 18 million years.
Skeptics argued that what people were seeing in Loch Ness were
"seiches"--oscillations in the water surface caused by the inflow of cold river
water into the slightly warmer loch.Amateur investigators kept an almost
constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched
expeditions to Loch Ness, using sonar to search the deep. Nothing conclusive was
found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected large, moving
underwater objects they could not explain. In 1975, Boston's Academy of Applied
Science combined sonar and underwater photography in an expedition to Loch Ness.
A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show the giant flipper of
a plesiosaur-like creature. Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s
resulted in more tantalizing, if inconclusive, readings. Revelations in 1994
that the famous 1934 photo was a hoax hardly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists
and professional and amateur investigators to the legend of the Loch Ness
Monster.