Ripley's Believe It or Not!
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Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the world. The cartoon was conceived and drawn by Robert Ripley. It later became a radio program, a television show, a chain of museums, and the subject of a pinball game.
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Robert Ripley
Robert Leroy Ripley (1890-1949) was a cartoonist who created the Believe It or Not! series, and an entrepreneur. He was an aspiring professional baseball player until he was injured in 1913, the same year his first cartoon appeared in a newspaper.
Comic strip
Originally involving sports feats, Ripley first called the strip Champs & Chumps, but he retitled it less than a year later as it began to focus less on sports.
It premiered on December 19, 1918 in the New York Globe and continued in other hands after Ripley's death in 1949.
At the peak of its popularity, the cartoon feature was being read by about 80 million readers, and during the first three weeks of May 1932 alone, Ripley received over two million pieces of fan mail.
Dozens of paperback editions reprinting the comic strip have been published over the decades. There have also been strips and books that have borrowed the Ripley format, such as It Happened in Canada. Recent Ripley's Believe or Not books containing new material have mostly done away with comic art in favor of photographs.
Radio program
to be written Apparently broadcast the world's first radio show worldwide.
TV programs
To date, there have been at least four television series based upon the comic strip.
- The first series, entitled simply Believe it or Not, was hosted by Robert L. Ripley himself and first aired in 1949. Ripley died of a heart attack during the filming of the 13th episode and was replaced as host by Robert St. John. Prior to the TV series, Ripley had hosted a series of Believe it or Not! theatrical short films dating back to the 1930s.
- Ripley's Believe it or Not! aired from 1982 to 1986 on the American ABC Network. Character actor Jack Palance hosted the popular series throughout its run, while several different co-hosts appeared from season to season, including Palance's daughter, Holly Palance, actress Cathie Shirriff, and singer Marie Osmond.
- An animated series, Ripley's Believe it or Not!, was produced in 1999 and followed the adventures of "Michael Ripley", Robert Ripley's nephew.
- The most recent series based upon the comic strip, once again titled Ripley's Believe it or Not! also debuted in 1999 on TBS. Hosted by actor Dean Cain, the series takes a slightly more sensationalistic approach to its subject matter, often finding excuses to show scantily clad women in-between coverage of legitimate oddities from the Ripley archives.
Museums
As of August, 2004, there are 27 Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditoriums around the world. Odditoriums, in the spirit of Ripley's Believe It or Not!, are often more than simple museums cluttered with curiosities. Some include theatres and arcades, such as the one in Gatlinburg, Tennessee which features a motion theatre. Others are constructed oddly themselves, such as the Orlando, Florida Odditorium which is built off-level. The first one was opened in Chicago in 1933.
Pinball game
There is a pinball game based on the various Ripley's Believe It or Not! subject matter.
