January 9

1493 : Columbus mistakes manatees for mermaids

On this day in 1493, Italian explorer Christopher
Columbus, sailing near the Dominican Republic, sees
three "mermaids"--in reality manatees--and describes
them as "not half as beautiful as they are painted."
Six months earlier, Columbus (1451-1506) set off from
Spain across the Atlantic Ocean with the Nina, Pinta
and Santa Maria, hoping to find a western trade route
to Asia. Instead, his voyage, the first of four he
would make, led him to the Americas, or "New World."

Mermaids, mythical half-female, half-fish creatures,
have existed in seafaring cultures at least since the
time of the ancient Greeks. Typically depicted as
having a woman's head and torso, a fishtail instead of
legs and holding a mirror and comb, mermaids live in
the ocean and, according to some legends, can take on
a human shape and marry mortal men. Mermaids are
closely linked to sirens, another folkloric figure,
part-woman, part-bird, who live on islands and sing
seductive songs to lure sailors to their deaths.

Mermaid sightings by sailors, when they weren't made
up, were most likely manatees, dugongs or Steller's
sea cows (which became extinct by the 1760s due to
over-hunting). Manatees are slow-moving aquatic
mammals with human-like eyes, bulbous faces and
paddle-like tails. It is likely that manatees evolved
from an ancestor they share with the elephant. The
three species of manatee (West Indian, West African
and Amazonian) and one species of dugong belong to the
Sirenia order. As adults, they're typically 10 to 12
feet long and weigh 800 to 1,200 pounds. They're
plant-eaters, have a slow metabolism and can only
survive in warm water.

Manatees live an average of 50 to 60 years in the wild
and have no natural predators. However, they are an
endangered species. In the U.S., the majority of
manatees are found in Florida, where scores of them
die or are injured each year due to collisions with
boats.

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1768 : First modern circus is staged

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