Halloween Double Feature -- Ripley's Believe It or Not

    Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is an entertainment franchise founded by cartoonist and explorer Robert Ripley in 1918. Ripley's specializes in exhibits that are bizarre, unusual, and extraordinary, following a mantra of "truth is stranger than fiction." These exhibits include objects, articles, and facts (if you're interested, they have an attraction nearby in Grand Prairie). Originally, the brand was a newspaper panel written by Ripley, but it later expanded into books, radio, television, and museums called "Odditoriums." Ripley's central appeal lies in presenting things that seem unbelievable but may in fact be true, leaving the audiences to decide for themselves whether to “believe it or not.”

    Of course, such incredulous displays (some of the tamer ones include national landmarks made out of matchsticks, vortex tunnels, the world's tallest man, and their infamous inventories of shrunken heads) can result in some...shall we say extraneous exhibits, by which I mean there are some instances in which Ripley's has presented items or facts and postulated their veracity, when in reality, they are hoaxes and/or misrepresentations. They claim, however, to have a research team that authenticates everything; moreover, Ripley himself, for what it's worth, always insisted that everything in his newspaper panel was always true, and challenged doubters to prove it. I myself am a doubter, though I do love the exhibits when I go, so I set out to prove it. To help, I extended my purview to outside the newspaper panel, and found three instances of Ripley's trying to pull a fast one. 

1. The Fiji Mermaid

    We've discussed the Fiji Mermaid before in class: a mummified half-monkey, half-fish hybrid supposedly found off the Fijian coast that has since been debunked. Fellow entertainer P.T. Barnum displayed the original in his American Museum in 1842, but it has since been destroyed. Ripley's version of the Fiji Mermaid attempts to lay claim to the title of the true "original" mermaid, which I think is hilarious considering it's all one big hoax anyway---quite literally, Ripley's mermaid is a fake of Barnum's fake. 

(By Daderot - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69554826)

    2.   The Legend of Frank Tower 

    Ripley's claims that man named Frank Tower survived the sinkings of the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland, and the Lusitania. On its face, this is quite astounding, and in my honest opinion, pretty believable considering I've heard stories of people surviving multiple lightning strikes to their person. At any rate, the legend has since been debunked; there is no credible evidence that "Frank Tower" was present aboard all three ships, though the name was found within the Lusitania's manifest. Though his name appears in no manifest, it apparently lives on as a modern day urban legend. 

(By Francis Godolphin Osbourne Stuart - http://www.uwants.com/viewthread.php?tid=3817223&extra=page%3D1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2990792)

    3.   The Birthday Statistic 

    In 2012, Ripley's published a factoid in newspapers that claimed one was more likely to die on their birthday than any other day of the year. Read straight up, it doesn't make sense---it's statistically improbable. However, if you read "birthday" as "day of birth" and "any other day of the year" as "any other time," it makes more sense. Statistically, the CDC has published findings indicating that a newborn's actual day of birth is their most dangerous on Earth. The death of the newborn, apparently, is ten times more likely on this first day than any other day. A little word trickery from Ripley's there shows us that the truth and validity of statements can be drastically twisted depending on the interpretation of the words. Read one way, the statement is false; read another, it's true. 

(https://centerforinquiry.org/blog/ripleys_believe_it_or_nots_macabre_mistake/)

Special thanks to Benjamin Radford for his explanation of the birthday statistic. 

Let it be known that I essentially paraphrased him.

Pictured below: a shrunken head, just for fun...

(https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ripley-oddities/)