With Apologies to Homer

If P.T. Barnum was correct, and there IS a sucker born every minute, this would be an easy, er, "tale" to swallow. It seems we continue to be fascinated by mythical creatures such as mermaids: those lovely creatures of literature and movie fame that caused men to fall madly in love and then overboard with romance. The Odyssey  might have been the most recognizable literary reference, but stories of women (often barely clothed, if at all) with tails where their legs/feet should be have become stock footage in just about any beach movie that doesn't feature sharks. And it seems that people still need to be convinced that such creatures did not exist.
The top image is an artifact featured in a museum somewhere in England and was purported to be a mummified mermaid, displayed as a sideshow attraction until it found its way into a museum where the scientists found that, gasp! the hair was HUMAN! Of course, an X-ray showed that the body was wire and wood and the eyes were some sort of shell, but still...
Recently, The Discovery Channel program Mermaids: The Body Found provided something of a tongue-in-cheek look at the myth of womenfish, and more than a couple of people contacted the program in the belief that this was scientific proof of the existence of mermaid. In fact, so serious were the callers that Carol Kavanagh of the National Ocean Service had to publish a report stating that "no evidence of aquatic humanoids had EVER been discovered," and that the Discovery Channel program was mere fiction.
That news will probably come as disappointment to all the folks who go to underwater shows just to see some nekkid womenfish.
However, I hold the opinion that it was the Japanese whaling industry that killed all the mermaids.
Hey, someone will believe that!