Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

It just might be the scariest sound in the world. That's the music from the movie Jaws. Every time I hear it,

I freak out a little bit. I'm guessing you might too.

For many people, the 1975 hit movie marked the beginning of shark paranoia.

The silent stealth threat circling underneath you as you float in the ocean,

staring up at the beautiful blue sky until suddenly,

well, you know what happens next in the nightmare.

But what you don't know is this.

Our collective fear of sharks actually goes back much further to 1916 and a shark called the Madawan Man-Eater.

If you went to the beach before the 1900s, you wouldn't have ever thought about a shark attack. Why would you? Shark attacks in the United States are incredibly rare, a point I regularly

try to make to my son Sam anytime we visit the ocean.

But on July 1st, 1916,

a young stockbroker on his summer vacation at the Jersey Shore ventured into the ocean.

And then, everything changed.

Only a few people on the beach

noticed him increasingly frantic in the water.

The ones who did

thought he was calling to the dog he'd been swimming with.

But when lifeguards carried him ashore, a crowd watch as he bled to death on the sand.

Two weeks later, a second attack at another beach on the Jersey shore.

Scientists mostly dismissed the two attacks as flukes.

Then came July 12th.

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