The Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916

Over a period of 12 days in July of 1916, a series of shark attacks killed four and injured one swimmer along the coast of New Jersey between Beach Haven and Matawan. While the loss of life was small compared to that caused by a simultaneous heat wave and polio epidemic in the northeastern United States that summer, to say nothing of the horrors of wartime Europe, the spectacle of an outbreak of shark attacks has a way of engendering a spectacular response. You can read more about that here:
Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916

At the time much less was known about sharks and their behavior than we now realize, and it was difficult to tell the difference between grounded science and beachside innuendo. Shark attacks are a rare, and at the time it was thought that aggressive sharks simply didn't wander north of the warmer parts of the Gulf Stream near Florida and Georgia. The chain of northern attacks forced ichthyologists to revise their assessments, and  steel nets went up around beach towns to protect swimmers. Speculation on the cause of the attacks ranged from the sensible (increased number of swimmers in the water due to wildly hot northeast temperatures) to the implausible (shady U-boat activity), but in all likelihood the attacks were simply a random peak in the noise of life on the coast of New Jersey.

Eventually the terror of the outbreak faded from memory. 58 years later Peter Benchley based Jaws loosely on the real events on the Jersey shore that muggy summer. Shark attacks, it seems, are better at inspiring imagination than fear these days.