Sharks, Bigfoot Lead Our Top News Stories of 2003

Ryan Mitchell
National Geographic News

Updated December 31, 2003
View a Photo Gallery of the Top Ten Stories of 2003: Go >>

Sharks and mysteries of the universe captured the imaginations of National Geographic News readers in 2003. The ocean's most feared predator and more unusual subjects accounted for half of the top ten news stories of the year and vied for the number one slot.

Our stories about Bigfoot, an alleged hominid believers say roams the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the effects of the full moon on the behavior of animals and criminals alike, held commanding leads until late in the game. The search for extraterrestrial life using radio transmissions from space also made the list.

In December, however, sharks that ply the waters off the coast of South Africa leapt to the top of the most-read list. A Q&A with husband-and-wife photographic team Chris and Monique Fallows and two accompanying photo galleries surpassed nature's novelties with over a million page visits.

Plants and animals, space, archaeology, and paleontology are perennial favorites with News readers and rounded out the top ten stories of the year. America Online featured many of these stories on its welcome screen—and millions of AOL members clicked through to read the full reports on Nationalgeographic.com.


Here, in ascending order of popularity, as measured by total number of visitors to each one of them, are National Geographic's hottest online stories for 2003:

So who went to the BigFoot Rally last weekend?? What happened? What'd ya'll find? Any porkchop selling venders there??

Rat, I didn't go. I started out and got about 30 miles from the house and my shoulder/neck started cramping. So I turned around and went home.
I'm really disappointed because I really believed they would show something that would MAKE big news.
Oh, well! I don't really think it was much to be honest.

Hey, there's a photo of bigfoot here!

www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=8&f=25&t=211651

I went to the Bigfoot Fest. All those people went through a lot of effort and the ungrateful bastard didn't even have the common decency to show. He can't act like he didn't know about it, there were signs everywhere.

Honestly, it was pretty lame. The best part was folks telling their encounter stories, some of which were pretty cool. I registered to win a M94 Winchester, but didn't win that either

Chad, thanks for the report. I didn't think it would be a good idea to drive 240 miles after taking a pain killer so I didn't go even though I started out.
The stories don't carry much weight without the proof. The story is still going around someone down there has one - dead or alive, it doesn't matter. Too bad for Oklahoma and the skeptics it wasn't shown at Honobia.
Too many  accounts of encounters and too many samples of genetically unknown hair (200+) plus all the footprint casts for it not have some validity.