I'm going to assume that most people in America have probably heard of Steven Spielberg's classic film known as Jaws. This story is about a great white shark that terrorizes a sea-side community in the Northeastern United States. Brody (the chief of police), Hooper (a scientist), and Quint (a fisherman), go out to hunt this animal and succeed in killing it.
But how did we get such a famous fish story? Well, Peter Benchley, the man who wrote the novel that the movie was adapted from, read about the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks. At this point in time, no one knew that shark could randomly attack humans and so many were making up strange ideas as to what really occured.
Here's what happened: In the summer of 1916, a shark, apparently a great white, somehow left the gulf stream. It was unable to catch its natural prey for an obscenely long time. Now great whites can go for months without eating; however, even they reach a point where they just can't go for much longer. That happened to this shark. So when it got to the New Jersey coast, it was so hungry that it attacked a swimmer, Charles Vansant, and killed him. Naturally, this caused a lot of panic. Some people denied it was a shark that attacked Vansant. Some thought it was a torpedo attack, others thought it was a mackerel. A few days later, the shark killed Charles Bruder and severed his legs. Beaches were closed as a result.
The shark also moved into a tidal inlet. Great whites don't usually do that; it's primarily bull sharks that can survive in fresh water. However, there had been a full moon at the time which made the creek saltier than ever. It attacked and killed Lester Stillwell and Stanly Fisher. It also attacked Joseph Dunn but he survived.
So that's where the Jaws story comes from. I read a book on the subject called Twelve Days of Terror. It's a good book, and the story is very interesting.
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