Disney is reissuing The Little Mermaid on Blu-ray and there are some amazing extras that might be new to even cult Disney fans. Some of the best stuff, however, is a behind-the-scenes look at exactly how The Little Mermaid was created — here are the actual people whose movements and expressions came to create Prince Eric and Ariel in animated form.

In his newest series of photos called Low Tech, Kevin Twomey artfully captures the complexity of old-style typewriters and similar machines. Despite being completely outdated, you cannot help being amazed at how complicated those “simple” devises really are. Hundreds of little parts were meticulously put together to form a machine that would perform such “basic” functions by today’s standards. Similarly, very few modern people actually think about how complicated the current technology really is. We take for granted streaming videos, GPS, and countless devises that we use every day, while in reality, these things would seem like magic to even the most prominent scientists from only half a century ago. (Photo by Kevin Twomey)

“Noh, or Nogaku – derived from the Japanese word for “skill” or “talent” – is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh “performance day” lasts all day and consists of five Noh plays interspersed with shorter, humorous kyōgen pieces. However, present-day Noh performances often consist of two Noh plays with one Kyōgen play in between”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A renowned Noh actor, Otoshige Sakai, demostrates how to put on a Noh mask, on May 17, 2004 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

The photo project was done for the organization Fishlove and included some other U.K.-based celebrities posing in the buff with critters ranging from bass fish to sharks. Its goal is to raise awareness of how overfishing is destroying the oceans. The release of Gillian's nearly nude pic, which was snapped by French portrait photographer Denis Rouvre, is timed with a European Parliament vote on banning destructive forms of deep-sea fishing in the Northeast Atlantic. The Fishlove organization is trying to rally voters to sign a petition ending deep-sea trawling – which, according to scientists, is negatively impacting the fish population and their habits – and Gillian solicited signatures in a Twitter post. Photo: “Fish Love” Project by Photographer Denis Rouvre. Gillian Anderson. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

There are many ways to interpret the creations of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki, whose works usually involve sculptures of people where two or more characters have merged into a single being. Possibly, Yoshitoshi Kanemaki is trying to express through his sculptures that everyone’s soul is multifaceted. Good emotions are mixed with the bad, love is mixed with hate, contempt with admiration. How often do you hear that a person loves someone deeply, while doing completely horrendous things, unable to see that he or she is destroying their object of love? Nevertheless, we should be thankful to the nature for all the different emotions that we are able to feel. Unlike animals, who only show simple forms of emotions, such as anger, happiness, and a few others, human soul is much deeper, allowing us to feel a full plethora of emotions. (Photo by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki)

“The Reversible Destiny Lofts – Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller) is a nine-unit multiple dwelling. It was first completed example of procedural architecture put to residential use. These lofts reflexively articulate the residents’ operative tendencies and coordinating skills essential to and determinative of human thought and behavior; which means to say, the lofts manage, by virtue of how they are constructed, to reveal to their residents the ins and outs of what makes a person, in this case the resident. This is the same set of tendencies and skills to which Arakawa and Madeline Gins gave diagrammatic form in their decades-long research project The Mechanism of Meaning”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The exterior of the concept design home “Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA: In Memory of Helen Keller” is seen on October 27, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

People take pictures near a Soviet flag flying on an embankment in Saint Petersburg, Russia on June 17, 2023. The flags of Russia, the USSR, and the Russian Empire were installed on the shore to mark the anniversaries of each flag's adoption. (Photo by Anton Vaganov/Reuters)

Do you think that history is a science? Well, not exactly. First, and foremost, history is the state's “legend of wars”, it’s official regalia. Of course, public historians are not interested in scientific truth – quite the opposite. In this respect, any attempt to present a state’s history as altruistic and benevolent as possible is welcomed and encouraged – as opposed to any revisionism attempts that may be more accurate. In this matter, Chinese have surpassed us all – they revised in highly creative manner (but rather shamelessly) the technology already invented by Europeans, a process that resulted in oldest state on the planet. Here is an interesting paradox: ask any sinologist about the Middle Kingdom during second century B.C., and he will describe it to you in such a vivid manner as if he has been living there all his life – but as soon as you will ask him to describe Chinese history in the 19-20th centuries… let's say, his eagerness will be greatly diminished. However, we will discuss China in a different article, and in the meantime we will try to understand how exactly historic “legend of wars” is formed and functions – based on a specific and well-known example. A great example is Ferdinand Magellan's first voyage around the world.