The original and ultimate in reality TV...Ripley’s Believe it or Not!
Amazing people, places and things. Odd facts, strange stories, true................or not. You decide.
In 1913 Robert Ripley was a cartoonist for the New York Globe newspaper. He was also an avid traveler and collector of what he called oddities.
He drew some of the oddities he had seen and collected over the years in the form of a cartoon for the newspaper. And eventually expanded it into a book.
From the book came the first TV show in 1949, starring Mr. Ripley himself as the narrator.
He was the first person to show the world a real, shrunken, human head....A two headed sheep....The Mona Lisa painting, made entirely out of toasted bread........He brought us the story of the dog named Bosco, in San Francisco, California (USA) who really got elected as mayor of the city and the story of the New York (USA) furniture company, who, every year holds a National ugly couch contest, with a $2000.00 award for the ugliest couch.
He brought us odd facts like, a window in an empty house will never frost over. He told us about the man who can turn his head completely around on his body 180º.
How about the native tribe that performs ritual face threading. Where they push a decorated rope through their nose, down their throat and out their mouth while doing ritual dances.
People who eat razor blades, glass, light bulbs, metal.........
Or even the artist Nicloa who had a 1, 000 pound ball of women’s bras, or Luis Torregua who has over 300 facial piercings!
Each week in his show, (which is now in it’s 3rd cycle..First he was the host in 1949, next there was a show airing in the 1980’s and now an all new version!)brings odd, amazing, sometimes revolting tidbits of information into our living rooms.
It makes for a quite unusual hour of pure entertainment. And his cartoons are still being published today in about 150 countries!
Believe it.........or not!