{"id":17449,"date":"2018-06-21T14:46:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T19:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/?p=17449"},"modified":"2025-12-01T08:57:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:57:28","slug":"serials-spotlight-history-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/uncategorized\/serials-spotlight-history-today","title":{"rendered":"Serials Spotlight: History Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I learned: Benjamin Franklin believed in and researched merpeople<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ellis Library gets a lot of serials. A LOT. If you have an interest in a topic, we have at least one journal\/magazine that will interest you, from art to history to footwear. Today\u2019s focus is on History Today<\/em>, \u201cBritain\u2019s best-loved serious history magazine.\u201d\u00a0 Not a history buff?\u00a0 Trust me, you\u2019ll still find something amazing in this journal or on their website (https:\/\/www.historytoday.com\/<\/a>) – they even included a spotify list to go with the most recent issue!<\/p>\n

The May 2018 edition has a very creepy merperson on the cover, but don\u2019t let that dissuade you. The article, \u201cDiving into Mysterious Waters,\u201d discusses not only the legend of mermaids\/mermen, but how some of the most famous and intelligent people in early Europe wholeheartedly agreed that merpeople existed.<\/p>\n

You may remember Cotton Mather from history lessons. He was the guy with giant, white hair who was disgustingly enthusiastic about hanging witches during the Salem Witch Trials.\u00a0 Considering he believed that nonsense, it isn\u2019t a huge surprise that in 1716, he wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London, revealing that he sincerely believed in merpeople.<\/p>\n

While we scoff at this admission now, was it really that surprising? Sure, Christopher Columbus believed in merpeople, even claiming to have seen three of them upon arriving in the New World, but when Europeans first landed in North America and saw the opossum for the first time, they compared them centaurs and gorgons because they had never seen a marsupial, let alone one with a grumpy face. There were new discoveries all the time. \u201cThe 18th<\/sup> century was as much a time of wonder as it as of rational science: the two, in fact, seemed to interweave by the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that tales of merpeople existed then, and still exist to this day. Since ancient times, people have worshipped merpeople. Medieval European churches were covered with mermaid symbolism (the theory is that these decorations were a reminder to Christians \u201cof the dangers of the lust for flesh\u201d). Even after religious changes in Europe, when Catholic imagery was erased, merpeople stuck around.<\/p>\n

Sightings abounded as well. In 1403, a group of Dutch women apparently found a mermaid and taught her how to wear clothes, take up spinning, and converted her to Christianity.\u00a0 How a woman who was half fish would wear clothes or exist outside of water is beyond me, but people believed them. Mermaid sightings increased in the 16th<\/sup> and 17th<\/sup> centuries, with the seas abounding with tales of mermaids and their siren calls. The explorer Henry Hudson (of Hudson River fame) noted sightings in his captain\u2019s log. Descriptions of mermaids over time contained the same basic information regarding their looks, until 1759, when the creepy drawing, \u201cThe Syren Drawn from Life\u201d was published and freaked everyone out with its big ears, bald head, and \u201chideously ugly\u201d features.<\/p>\n

European cabinets of curiosity began to display \u201cmermaid appendages\u201d and by the end of the 18th<\/sup> century, some of the \u201csmartest men in the western world,\u201d including Benjamin Franklin and other members of the Royal Society, decided to take on the task of trapping and investigating merpeople.\u00a0 This was a step in the kind of scientific research we continue to use today.\u00a0 Sure, we may not chase mermaids around, but we do investigate other amazing things, with scientific discoveries happening all the time.\u00a0 Parallel universes and DNA codes may not sing to sailors and lure them to their death, but the current scientific research is still pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

The creepy mermaid drawing vs how people typically imagine mermaids. That picture had to have bummed people out when it was published.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And to prove that not all merpeople conform to the same typical body type, here’s a new discovered species.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I learned: Benjamin Franklin believed in and researched merpeople Ellis Library gets a lot of serials. A LOT. If you have an interest in a topic, we have at least one journal\/magazine that will interest you, from art to history to footwear. Today\u2019s focus is on History Today, \u201cBritain\u2019s best-loved serious history magazine.\u201d\u00a0 Not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":17450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/53\/2018\/06\/maycover_print.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 08:52:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"private","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17466,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions\/17466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.missouri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}