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.Also on this Day: May 2, 1924:A grisly crime leads to rubber gloves
Patrick Mahon is arrested on suspicion of murder after
showing up at the Waterloo train station in London to claim his bag. He
quickly confessed that the bloody knife and case inside were connected
to the death of his mistress, Emily Kaye. Mahon then directed the
Scotland Yard detectives to a particularly grisly scene in a Sussex
bungalow, where they found Kaye's remains, dismembered and hidden among
hatboxes, trunks, and biscuit tins.
Mahon's suspicious wife set
off the investigation by asking a friend and former police officer to
check out the baggage claim ticket that she had found in Mahon's suit
earlier. Following his arrest at the train station, Mahon claimed that
Kaye, who was pregnant with his child, had slipped and struck her head,
thus causing her death. He argued that he was only trying to protect his
marriage by disposing of the body in the manner in which he did.
The
medical examiner in charge, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, had no choice but to
attempt to reassemble Kaye's body in order to find the cause of death.
Over the course of several days, he painstakingly pieced her body back
together from the remaining assorted parts. Missing only her head,
Spilsbury was able to discount Mahon's claim that a single fall was
responsible for her death. He also deduced that Kaye had been carved up
with a knife that Mahon had purchased prior to the murder.
An
important investigation innovation came about from the crime scene at
the Sussex bungalow: The officers, who were not outfitted with gloves,
were forced to pick up Kaye's remains with their bare hands. After the
Mahon investigation, rubber gloves became standard equipment at murder
scenes.Much of Mahon's case is bound up in myth and legend. Purportedly, Mahon told a fellow inmate that he was burning Kaye's head on the stove when her eyes suddenly popped open.
Mahon was executed for murder in September 1924.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history [02.05.12]
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