On this date in 1608, navigator Henry Hudson sighted a mermaid while sailing through the arctic waters of Russia. “The Almanac of the Infamous, Incredible and Ignored” notes that Christopher Columbus reportedly spotted three mermaids in the Caribbean in 1493 and later logged additional sightings off the coast of Guinea.  In 1614, explorer John Smith spied a young woman in the West Indies. Other sightings date back to 1610 in Newfoundland waters where Captain Whitbourne described a sea creature with the face of a woman. In 1917, the Leonidas, sailing from America to France, was accompanied by a mermaid for six hours. Finally, a “merman” wiggled from a fisherman’s net in India in 1937.