Believe It Or Not

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, and a chain of museums.

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.

These comic strips are available in book form.

Radio program

to be written

TV program

to be written Ripley died of a heart attack during the filming of the 13th episode.

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.