英語(yǔ)聽(tīng)力：自然百科 尼爾斯湖怪之謎

Loch Ness(尼斯湖), a beautiful but forbidding(可怕的)lake in the Scottish Highlands. The first recorded sighting of a Loch Ness monster goes all the way back to the 6th century when an Irishmonk was said to have chastised(責(zé)罵) the vicious creature and ordered it back into the depth. But it wasn't until a string of sightings in the 1930s that hunting for the Loch Ness monster began in earnest.

London tabloids(小報(bào)) printed eyewitness accounts and they desperately wanted a photo to go with the stories. In 1934, a London surgeon named R. Kenneth Wilson provided this snapshot. The image was immediately dubbed "the Surgeon's Photo". It was printed and reprinted, appearing in countless newspapers and books, and the Loch Ness legend continued to grow.

Then nearly 60 years later, a man named Christian Spurling made a stunning revelation. The photo was the brainchild(想法) of his stepfather Duke Wetherell, a flamboyant(愛(ài)炫耀的) big game hunter, the Daily Mail(每日郵報(bào))had sent to Loch Ness to capture Nessie(怪獸的昵稱(chēng)) on film. According to Spurling, when Duke failed to come up with a photo, the paper fired him. So Wetherell decided to settle the score(以牙還牙). Wetherell took a toy submarine, fashioned a Nessie-shaped head and neck, and launched the monster in the shallows of Loch Ness. He took the famous photo and later convinced the London surgeon to claim it as his own.