Loch Ness
Saint Columba (565)
The earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St. Columba by Adomnán, written in the sixth century AD. According to Adomnán, Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of the Picts with his companions when he encountered local residents burying a man by the River Ness. They explained that the man was swimming in the river when he was attacked by a "water beast" which mauled him and dragged him underwater. Although they tried to rescue him in a boat, he was dead. Columba sent a follower to swim across the river. The beast approached him, but Columba made the sign of the cross and said: "Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once." The creature stopped as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled, and Columba's men and the Picts gave thanks for what they perceived as a miracle.
"Surgeon's photograph" (1934)
The "surgeon's photograph" is reportedly the first photo of the creature's head and neck. Supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, it was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934. Wilson's refusal to have his name associated with it led to it being known as the "surgeon's photograph". According to Wilson, he was looking at the loch when he saw the monster, grabbed his camera and snapped photos.
The photo's scale was controversial; it is often shown cropped (making the creature seem large and the ripples like waves), while the uncropped shot shows the other end of the loch and the monster in the centre. In 1993, the makers of the Discovery Communications documentary Loch Ness Discovered analysed the uncropped image. An analysis of the full photograph indicated that the object was small, about 60 to 90 cm long. Since 1994, most agree that the photo was an elaborate hoax. Details of how the photo was taken were published in the 1999 book, Nessie – the Surgeon's Photograph Expose. The creature was reportedly a toy submarine built by Christian Spurling, the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell. Wetherell had been publicly ridiculed by his employer, the Daily Mail, after he found "Nessie footprints" which turned out to be a hoax. To get revenge on the Mail, Wetherell perpetrated his hoax with co-conspirators Spurling (sculpture specialist), Ian Wetherell (his son, who bought the material for the fake), and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent). The toy submarine was bought from F. W. Woolworths, and its head and neck were made from wood putty. After testing it in a local pond the group went to Loch Ness, where Ian Wetherell took the photos. Chambers gave the photographic plates to Wilson, a friend of his who enjoyed "a good practical joke. He sold the first photo to the Daily Mail, who then announced that the monster had been photographed.