Posted on 01/15/2020 10:09:20 AM PST by SunkenCiv
According to the 1975 book Man Eating Sharks! by Felix Dennis, on a beautiful, clear summer day in 1955, one beach along the shores of Lake Michigan was packed with people looking to cool off and enjoy the sunny day, and one of these was George Lawson, a boy from Chicago. Lawson was out with many others splashing about and swimming off a boat near the beach when witnesses allegedly saw him pulled underwater, seemingly by something yanking him under and accompanied by the boy's panicked screams. Shockingly, a dorsal fin was reported by several others on the boat as cutting away through the water right after the incident.
One man named John Adler managed to reach the thrashing boy and pull him aboard the boat, where it was found that the victim was entirely missing one of his legs below the knee. Adler would say of his thoughts as Lawson writhed about and the pool of blood spread in front of stunned witnesses, "I just couldn't believe it, but I had to believe what I saw happening right before my eyes!" Lawson was rushed to the hospital, where doctors apparently were quick to recognize the bite wound as having been inflicted by a shark...
(Excerpt) Read more at mysteriousuniverse.org ...
Bilgewater dump from a seagoing vessel?
Yep, Cahokia.
esox
muskellunge
As have Greenland sharks
Thankfully it wasn’t a land shark.
That’s a possibility, see the link in rdl6989’s message:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3808398/posts?page=7#7
The teeth of one of the clubs at Cahokia were from a Great White Shark so must have been brought or traded in... the wood and teeth and effigy teeth were found in Mound 34 which lies on the east side of the largest mound, Monks’ Mound. Mound 34 dates to 1200AD. There were teeth from two types of sharks found in the Cahokia area, the other type was probably bull shark. Cahokia was already known for the odd curved teeth effigies but I think until the archeologist Perino found the wood [black walnut, IIRC] and teeth together no one knew what the curved effigy teeth were for.
Not likely, Lake Michigan is much too cold and not the type of environment where they are naturally found.....
“The Mysterious Shark Attack in Lake Michigan”
thank goodness this was before lasers were available ...
It shouldn’t be too hard to peruse Chicago newspaper records for that year. A story like this would certainly have made the news. I no longer have a subscription to Newspapers.com or I would look.
Hadn't heard that, but have seen Jeremy Wade fishing for them on his TV series. I knew folks that lived on James Island, outside of Charleston whose house was on a salt water canal, and used to get dolphins swimming off their dock. I always wondered if dolphins came that far in, that sharks might too.
Quite likely a musky.....Torch Lake has them and Lake St. Clair has some monsters.
The current record is 59 inches and 58 lbs. and it was caught in one of lakes that feed into Torch Lake.
Or an extremely large alligator gar....
sharknado...
I’m surprised it took 36 replies to get to Sharknado.
Perino found them in 1948... so someone could have spread the stories after hearing about his find, a lot of folks from that era in Illinois were into Indian artifacts and legends in a big way.
The Alton Piasa bird is a combination of real bluff paintings of the American Indian “underwater panther” described by the explorer Marquette as being painted by whirlpools in the river possibly to alert travelers, carvings found on Spiro mounds Oklahoma cups or gorgets, and imaginary details invented by a newspaper contributor a long time ago influenced by European dragon tales - his story sounds more like Tolkien’s story about the dwarves and Smaug. The creater Alton has painted on the bluffs doesn’t resemble the originals copied by Marquette very much.
PS Excellent new GWS shark film if you haven’t seen it.
https://www.pbs.org/video/great-white-shark-new-perspectives-of-an-ancient-predator-zidgxv/
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