On this day in history, on the 21st April 1934, readers of The Daily Mail were amazed to see something spectacular on the front page of the paper - staring back at them was the Loch Ness Monster, snapped in the now infamous Surgeon's Photo, proving once and for all the existence of Nessie - only actually, it didn't.
The black and white photo allegedly depicted the head and neck of the beast emerging from the Loch, causing rippling waves to appear around it, indicating a size to this creature of the deep. The photo was taken and presented by a man named Robert Kenneth Wilson, a gynaecologist from London who told the papers that he has snapped the photo whilst holidaying in Scotland, and spotted the creature whilst visiting the Loch. He sold his incredible findings to the paper for the princely sum of £100.
Though the photo caused a stir within the UK, it was not without its sceptics, many of which were early to question the authenticity of the image given that the original photo was not the one used by the Daily Mail. This more famous version of the photo is actually cropped in order to compliment the size of Nessie, whereas the original image, which in its entirety is large enough to also include the other side of the Loch in it, allowed critics to get a more accurate calculation of the creature's size, stating the creature would have only been about 2-3 feet in size, not quite living up to the monstrous size Wilson had claimed it to be. There were actually four photos in total taken of the creature, though whilst two of these images were considered too blurred and obscured to warrant any form of investigation, the other two offered a more substantial viewing. The second photo however is still often disregarded for its blurriness, though it seems to show Nessie about to dive down into the waters.
Further suspicions were raised when Wilson almost instantly demanded his name be removed from any association with the image, hence it being titled The Surgeon's Photo by the media, which led to the British Medical Association to come snooping around upon learning that one of their own was distributing monster photos, slapping him with a fine for his "breach of professional ethics" in releasing the photos.
Still though, despite the arguments of its size, the photo itself was proven to be legitimate when investigated by photography professionals, meaning that whether or not people believed the creature to be the Loch Ness Monster, the image itself was legitimate, meaning whatever was photographed was indeed there in the waters and not doctored in at a later date.
And so, life went on around the world, as it seemed that Nessie fans across the globe could still draw The Surgeon's Photo as their (admittedly weak) trump card when debating the existence of the monster - that is, until 1993.
See it was during that year that a 90-year-old man named Chritstian Spurling felt he had to get something off his chest before his death that same year - he was the man who built the creature seen in the photo. It turns out the origin of the image was a tale of revenge with multiple players involved, Spurling and Wilson included.
It all started when actor and director Marmaduke Wetherell was left ridiculed by The Daily Mail when "Nessie footprints" he discovered had turned out to be faked, and so in retaliation for their attack on his character, he decided to get even, by creating a fake so authentic looking he could fool the papers right back. He enlisted the help of his son in law Spurling to use his sculpting talents to create the beast's head and neck out of wood putty, and then by attaching it to a toy submarine his son Ian had bought from Woolworths. The men then tested their model on a local lake, before taking the prop up to Loch Ness where they snapped the four photos to be used as their evidence. During the hoaxing, Marmaduke became aware of approaching water bailiffs (they're like the police, but for bodies of water) and so in a panic pushed the model down into the water with his foot to hide their crime, where it still resides to this day somewhere.
Two more men who were associates of Marmaduke then became involved in this great conspiracy, those being an insurance agent named Maurice Chambers, and Robert Wilson, both of whom came aboard the S.S. Bullshit with the Wetherell family as they loved a good laugh and felt their professions would garner the story some credibility, given that none of the Marmadukes could put the image forward or else people might link it back to the original Nessie footprint debacle. The photographic plates were given to Wilson, and after contacting The Daily Mail with his find of the century, the rest is history.
This was only further proven in 1994 with the passing of Chambers, who had kept papers detailing the hoax that were then found in his home following his death, thus closing the lid on the whole Surgeon's Photo reign of terror over the world of science and reality. Shame.
The photo still lives on in infamy however, given that it was never actually proven to be a fake for almost sixty years, and following its release it seemed to spark more Nessie sightings, two of which would also come about in the 30s, including video footage shot in colour in 1938. But hey, it's a neat photo, and its up there with the likes of the Bigfoot video still and the alien autopsy stills as some of the best bogus monster footage of all time. Respect.
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