10: Pliny the Elder Do you believe in mermaids?
You’d be surprised how many people do.
The first account of a mermaid sighting came from the 1st century AD.
It all started with a naturalist named Pliny the Elder.
Pliny the Elder was born in either 23 or 24 AD as Gaius Plinius Secundus.
He studied law in Rome, served in the military, then traveled through much of the old Roman
Empire and eventually rose to become a commander.
In his later years, Pliny the Elder traveled the world and wrote natural history, trying
to understand as much of the natural world around him as possible.
And this was when he allegedly discovered a mermaid.
It was in Western Europe that Pliny the Elder heard whispers of a human-like creature with
fish scales found washed up on the beaches.
He began to write factual accounts of mermaids.
A lot of what we understand about mermaids today actually comes from Pliny the Elder,
who was considered to be a serious naturalist.
He wrote accounts of mermaids climbing onto ships and sinking them, of mermaids washing
up on the shore, and of one particularly spooky mermaid that was spotted in Gaul, what is
modern France.
Unfortunately, none of his sightings have ever actually been substantiated.
But what's really strange is that the mermaid is the only “mythical” creature that Pliny
the Elder ever wrote of in his books on the natural world, making you wonder why he thought
mermaids were real if he hadn’t actually seen one.
9: The 1967 Mayne Island Mermaid It was 1967 in British Columbia, Canada, there
were passengers on board a ferry traveling through Active Pass near Mayne Island who
witnessed a mermaid.
This sighting was shared by several witnesses who claimed to have seen a mermaid eating
a salmon and sitting on a rock.
According to a report in The Daily Colonist that came out the day after the sighting,
witnesses saw a woman with blonde hair, no top on her body, and the tail of a beautiful
fish.
And they saw her taking a bite out of a salmon and eating it raw!
Witnesses claimed she had the lower body of either a fish or a porpoise, which matches
pretty well with what a mermaid should look like.
Someone even managed to get a photograph of the mermaid, though there have been disputes
as to just how real this picture is.
The woman in the photo is obviously a mermaid, and it’s actually the only relatively legitimate
photo of a mermaid that’s ever been taken.
After the event, The Colonist newspaper offered a reward of $25,000 for anyone who could capture
the mermaid.
Unfortunately, the mermaid was never captured nor was she ever seen again.
What would someone do with a mermaid if they captured it anyway?
Hmm..
8: The Israeli Mermaid The most recent mermaid sighting came from
the small Israeli town of Kiryat Yam in 2011.
A mermaid that witnesses said looked like a fish mixed with a young girl began to appear
at sunset, performing tricks before disappearing into the surf.
Was it the real life Ariel?
Curious about what is happening on dry land?
According to one eyewitness, the mermaid was lying in the sand in a weird way and at first,
and the man and his friends simply thought it was a woman.
But when they approached, she jumped into the water and disappeared.
Every person present agreed that she had a tail.
Naturally, the town was ecstatic to have their very own mermaid.
The government offered a reward of $1 million for the first person to get a real photograph
of the creature.
But just like in Canada almost 50 years earlier, not a single person managed to snap a photograph
of the mermaid.
It just wasn't happening.
Some experts then claimed the mermaid was either a hoax or an optical illusion.
Maybe the power of suggestion coerced tourists into believing they saw a mermaid when what
they probably saw was nothing at all.
In the end, the myth of the Israeli mermaid lost traction and everyone forgot about it.
Do you think the Israeli Ariel is still out there?
Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to give this video a like and hit that
subscribe button if you haven’t already!
:) 7: The Ugly Mermaid
The Fejee mermaid was advertised in the 1840s as a true mermaid from South America.
It was initially displayed at Concert Hall in New York City in the summer of 1842.
People walking into the exhibition thought they were going to come face to face with
a beautiful woman who had the tail of a fish or a dolphin.
What they witnessed instead was a grotesque monstrosity with hair sprouting out of its
bony head, its lips pulled back, and its sharp teeth threatening and disturbing.
The mermaid had a skeletal torso with a scaly, fish-like body and scales.
The stunted little creature was only about 3 feet(0.9m) long.
To understand why this disgusting monster was so fascinating in the 1800s, we first
need to look at why it was called the Fejee mermaid.
Back in the 1800s, Americans thought Fiji was a place filled with savagery and cannibals,
and even goblins and apparently mermaids!
This was a time when monsters could still exist, and most people were easily fooled
into thinking they did.
Museum entrepreneur P.T.
Barnum used this to his advantage and made a fortune off displaying the Fejee mermaid.
But of course, this was not a real mermaid.
It probably came from Japan in the 17th century.
It had been used as a sideshow attraction for almost 200 years.
It had been put on display in London in 1822 but was quickly removed when a trusted surgeon
declared the mermaid was nothing more than an orangutan cut in half with its body stitched
onto a fish.
But the Americans didn’t care, and they went on ogling over the mermaid until the
1860s.
6: John Smith & the Mermaid John Smith was one of the earliest people
to claim he saw a mermaid.
Yes, this is the same John Smith known for his daring rescue of Pocahontas.
But before Pocahontas, John Smith was a sailor in the Caribbean.
He allegedly had an encounter with a mermaid in 1614, describing the creature in his own
words as being a woman with green hair that he saw swimming in the water and that was
by no means unattractive.
When John saw the woman turn away and dive below the waves, he noticed she had a fish
tail and was actually a mermaid!
According to the Smithsonian Magazine, that's exactly how the story of John Smith and the
mermaid went.
But it's possible that John Smith never actually saw the mermaid.
Historian Vaughn Scribner has recently argued that John Smith never recorded the mermaid
encounter himself and that it was written at a different time by a different person.
Here's where the evidence comes from.
All historians agree that John Smith was not actually in Caribbean waters in 1614.
He was there in 1607, and yet every story of him meeting a mermaid is from 1614.
The dates just don’t add up!
5: Mermaid Manatees Mermaids are real.
Unfortunately, they may not be exactly how we picture them.
The truth is that mermaids may actually be sea cows, also known as manatees.
When Christopher Columbus got in his boat and set out in 1492, he recorded one of the
first mermaid sightings in the new world.
He claimed that he saw a very ugly woman swimming through the water, slightly overweight and
with a big tail.
What Christopher Columbus actually saw was probably a manatee.
No wonder he thought the mermaid was ugly.
Manatees don't look anything like human women!
They don't look like human anything.
However, if Christopher Columbus was a bit exhausted from standing on a boat all day,
if it was a little rainy outside, and if he was feeling a little lonely, there is a pretty
good chance he confused a manatee with a person, thus single-handedly starting the myth of
the mermaid in North America!
What do you think?
Do you think you could confuse a manatee with a mermaid?
4: The Exeter Mermaid There is a legendary tale from England in
which a mermaid was discovered in the waters of Exeter.
The story comes from 1737 when fishermen drew in a net and discovered a creature shaped
an awful lot like a human.
It had two legs and leaped out of their net and then ran away.
But this mermaid was a bit different than what you’d typically imagine.
Instead of having a fish tail, the mermaid had webbed feet like a duck!
It also wasn't female.
Instead, it was a merman! *cough cough, merman!
The fishermen also claimed that it had a tail coming out of its rear end and that it was
only about four feet(1.2m) in height.
A similar creature was then spotted in 1823 in the exact same area.
It was described as having two legs with animal features.
This time, the creature was apparently knocked down and killed by the confused onlookers,
who then just disposed of the body.
Nonetheless, there has been no archaeological evidence of a creature matching the description
found in the area.
All we have is a legend passed down for over 200 years.
3: Japanese Mermaids The stories of mermaids in Japan are quite
fascinating and very different from other places in the world.
In Japan, mermaids are not beautiful women who bewitch sailors.
Instead, they are fishy monsters with golden scales, the mouth of a monkey, sharp teeth,
and a voice like a screeching bird.
Oh, and they have delicious flesh for eating.
Plus, anyone who eats a Japanese mermaid is said to live for an exceptionally long time.
In Japan, a mermaid is known as a ningyo, which translates roughly to human fish.
When a ningyo is caught, it is supposed to bring misfortune and storms.
That's why most fishermen throw the ningyo back into the water whenever they accidentally
catch them.
It also was once believed that if a ningyo washed ashore, it would be an omen of calamity
or war.
There is a Japanese legend that tells a tale of how the mermaid first appeared at Lake
Biwa to Prince Shotoku.
When the prince was on the brink of death, the mermaid told him a sad story.
Apparently the creature was once a fisherman who sailed through prohibited waters.
As punishment, she turned into a hideous animal!
The ningyo, wanting to atone for her transgression, asked the prince to build a temple to display
her remains as an example of the sacredness of life, and he did.
The temple is known as Tenshou-Kyousha Shrine.
What's really fascinating about Japanese mermaids is that they could actually be real creatures!
It's not that far fetched to think there is some kind of fish-like monkey monster living
in the ocean and that the Japanese made up stories about it.
I mean, look at all the other bizarre looking fish that have been captured or seen in the
planet’s oceans.
Though of course, there has never been a ningyo found in modern times.
2: South Africa’s Mermaid In 2008, the legendary South African mermaid,
a beast known as the Kaaiman, was spotted near a small village.
The residents of this village have believed in the creature for generations.
This most modern sighting even worked to convince the most skeptical residents that the monster
is indeed real.
The sighting happened when a group of friends was spending their day relaxing next to the
river.
Somebody heard a disturbing sound, all the friends looked over, and that was when they
saw the figure of a pale white woman with long black hair splashing violently in the
water.
Somebody ran in the water to save the woman, thinking she was in trouble.
But they stopped when they witnessed a red glow in the woman's eyes.
They realized it was the legendary Kaaiman, a monster so horrible that it eats the flesh
of children!
The group then ran away!
Now the villagers believe the Kaaiman was trying to lure the young friends into the
river to kill them!
Experts are obviously skeptical about the sighting, but those in the area know that
it's something the villagers take very seriously.
It’s even something they greatly consider when going anywhere near the water.
1: The Hawaiian Mermaid Just a few years ago, reports of a dead mermaid
being found at a beach in Hawaii set the Internet ablaze.
The initial reports claimed that the mermaid’s body was found but she had already passed
away.
The photographs that surfaced online were absolutely convincing.
It really did look like a dead mermaid.
She had fish-like skin, a human face, blonde hair, and a mermaid tail.
Nobody knew just where this mermaid had come from or how she even existed in the first
place.
But then reports started coming in that the same mermaid was found in other places around
the world, including Egypt.
It became a little suspicious.
The creature with a fish tail and human head was starting to look like a hoax.
And as it turned out, it absolutely was a hoax.
The mermaid body was actually crafted by the artist Juan Cabana.
It was a completely fake sculpture made to look like a true mermaid.
But it was just a prop – one that had actually been used in the Pirates of the Caribbean
movie!
As far as we know, there has never actually been a mermaid corpse found anywhere on Earth
at any point in history.
Thanks for watching!
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