Loch Ness Monster
Staying with bonnie Scotland, we have possibly the most famous of legendary creatures, the Loch Ness Monster, now more affectionately known as Nessie. Despite the majority of the scientific community believing Nessie’s existence has no biological basis, some still believe that it might be a type of plesiosaur from the Mesozoic era that has somehow survived from their believed extinction some 66 million years ago.
The earliest written account of this elusive monster was by Adamnán of Iona in a book about his cousin titled the ‘Life of St. Columba’ in A.D. 565. In his book, writing about a century after the events described, he tells the story of how Irish monk Saint Columbia was the first person to record having seen a monster in the loch. But modern interest in Nessie only really took off in the 1900s.
One of the most famous images captured of Nessie was taken by British gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson and was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April in 1934. Known as the “surgeon’s photograph”, as Wilson refused to have his name associated with it, the now iconic photograph shows the monster’s head and neck. Although a Sunday Telegraph article from the 7th of December 1975 described it as a fake, it wouldn’t be until the early 1990’s that most would agree that the photo was an elaborate hoax.
It wouldn’t be the first hoax and certainly not the last, something that has plagued the hunt for Nessie. There have been many scientific expeditions and sonar studies of the loch over the years but to no avail. Either Nessie is good at hiding from scientific equipment and cameras or she is just a legend.
Learn more about the Loch Ness Monster here
