Factually Mythical
Some mythical creatures which still come up in modern life:
Sunday
The Kraken is an enormous ship-attacking octopus / squidlike creature mentioned in Scandinavian folklore, with similar creatures in other nations’ mythology. More recent discoveries and studies suggest that the (less threatening) giant squid is the inspiration for the Kraken, which is currently the namesake for a pro hockey team, a rum brand, and makes appearances in many modern fictional films.
Monday
The Cyclopses were one-eyed man-eating giants best known from Greek mythology, though other folklores also described such creatures. The Greeks described three cyclopses with deity parents, and Polyphemos was the one famously confronted by Odysseus in The Odyssey. Today Cyclops is the namesake of one of the X-Men comic book characters, among other things.
Tuesday
The Chimera in Greek mythology was a creature with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a snake in the most common description. In modern biology, a “chimeric” describes a creature or tissue comprised of two or more sets of DNA.
Wednesday
The phoenix, the bird famously reborn from its own ashes, began in ancient Arabia and Egypt before passing through Greek and eventually Christian and even Jewish traditions, and similar birds show up in Persian, Russian and Chinese folklore.
Thursday
The half-human, half-fish creatures we know as mermaids are strikingly global characters in folklore. Though they vary in form, there are mermaid counterparts in African, Greek, Roman, Irish, Chinese, Scottish, Brazilian, Philippine, Southeast Asian, and Eastern and Western European folklore traditions.
Friday
Although stories of large, man-like wild creatures have been a part of various global cultures for a long time, the “Bigfoot” legend familiar today started with a 1958 newspaper article about loggers in Northern California discovering unusually large footprints in the forest. The story generated unexpected interest, and the legend grew from there. “Sasquatch” derives from “sasq’ets,” the term for the creature in the language of the First Nations peoples of southern British Columbia.
Saturday
References to a unicorn-like creature turn up in the mythology and artwork of Mesopotamia, India and China as well as in Greek narratives. Catching the creature is quite difficult, so the legend goes, and cups made from its horn protect against poisoning. Narwhals and rhinoceroses were more likely the source of these magical “horns.” A unicorn is not to be confused with a Pegasus, the immortal winged (but hornless) horse, and in the modern world, a “unicorn” is a private startup company now valued at $1 billion or more.