Ripley’s Believe It or Not! started as a newspaper panel featuring strange but true facts and stories from around the world. It grew to include museums, merchandise, and other media. The brand features bizarre objects and events, and there are about 32 museums worldwide, each with unique curiosities and features. The empire continues to expand with aquariums, wax museums, and 3D moving theaters.
Ripley believe it or not! has transcended its beginnings as a syndicated panelist on newspapers to become a global franchise that includes museums, several television series and other attractions. Robert Ripley was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur, and collector of oddities who created the Ripleys, believe it or not! series of newspaper panels to highlight strange but true facts and stories from around the world. The panel was immediately successful in part because Ripley published articles that his readers sent him, including oddly shaped vegetables and other oddities. The concept then grew to encompass museums, merchandise and other media despite Ripley’s death in 1949.
The Ripleys believe it or not! brand is all about sharing sensational and weird facts and stories from around the world. Many objects and events can be so bizarre or strange that they seem impossible. Ripley featured everything from multi-headed animals to unexplained disappearances, sightings of sea monsters, and people with extraordinary talents or hobs. He also included stories that seemed unbelievable, like a ship hit by a meteorite at sea. Ripley left it to the reader to believe whether what she described was true, although it took many researchers over the years to locate and validate what he printed.
The panel began in December 1918. At the height of its popularity, it was estimated to have more than 80 million readers worldwide, and Ripley was receiving millions of letters informing him of strange new objects or happenings. In 1930, Ripley brought Ripley’s Believe It or Not! on the radio and then on film and television. About 24 short films were made for Warner Brothers in the early 1930s, and four television series, including an animated children’s series, were produced in 1949, 1982, 1999 and 2000.
Ripley began showing her collection of oddities to the public in 1933 at the Chicago World’s Fair. The success of the exhibit led to a traveling show and the first permanent Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum, or Odditorium, as he called it, opened in 1950 in St. Augustine, Florida. There are about 32 Ripleys believe it or not! museums operating all over the world, from the Wisconsin Dells in Wisconsin to the UK, Mexico and Asia.
Every Ripley believe it or not! museum is different. Some include theaters and haunted houses or mazes or are built in a unique way. For example, the museum in Orlando, Florida was built to look like it’s sinking into the ground, while the Niagara Falls building is shaped like the Empire State Building and features King Kong on top. The Mexico City museum is housed in a replica of a medieval castle.
Each museum contains unique curiosities. Shrunken heads, celebrity death masks and deformed animal taxidermy are showcased with magic mirrors and other illusions. Other features include mummified animals, incredible sculptures, and a collection of strangely engraved tombstones. Museum visitors in Australia, for example, are greeted by a band of animatronic human oddities, including a three-legged banjo player and a trumpet-playing Egyptian dwarf in a birdcage. They were all real people.
The original Ripley’s believe it or not! panel survives in book and syndication format, but the empire continues to expand. Aquariums, wax museums and 3D moving theaters also bear Ripley’s name. Tourists from around the world can experience firsthand the strange but true stories and objects that once fascinated Ripley.
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