August 27, 1958: While working on a construction site in northwest California, a tractor operator named Jerry Crew found a series of massive, 16-inch footprints tracked through the mud. Due to the size of the prints, the media began referring to the creature that created them as "Bigfoot." The name stuck, eventually replacing Sasquatch in the popular imagination as the name for North America's legendary ape-man. It was long suspected that Crew's prank-loving boss, Ray Wallace, had created the prints by strapping carved wooden feet to his boots and stomping around in the mud. This was confirmed when Wallace died in 2002 and his family came clean with the whole story. (Bigfoot believers, however, continue to insist the prints were legitimate Sasquatch tracks.)