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N0KFQ > TODAY 02.05.15 16:05l 86 Lines 4512 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - May 2
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1933 Loch Ness Monster sighted
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 20,000 pound sterling 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
plesiosaurs-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.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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