The Loch Ness Monster has been known for at least 1500 years. But in the last century, there was a peak of popularity of the monster. It all happened because of one particular photo.
The legend has it that Roman soldiers first spotted the unusual creature in Ancient times. But the first registered report of Nessie was in the year 565 AD. It is said the Irish Saint Columba met it in the River Ness.
In 1933, a couple, the Spicers, claimed that they had seen the monster in the lake. As they said, Nessie was a green creature with a long neck and a snail-like head. So Daily Mail commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a big-game hunter, to locate the sea serpent. Wetherell claimed that he found the footprints of Nessie. But they turned up to be a hoax. In fact, they were the footprints of a hippo. Daily Mail publicly discredited Wetherell.
But the following year a mysterious photo of the Loch Ness monster was published. The photographic analysis of the picture proved that it was a real photo. Only in the 90s, the newspapers found that it was a fake.