Ripley's Believe it or Not!

There are also books by Ripley's, and their wax museums can be found in tourist traps across the nation.

At the time the show aired, I was still a kid, and I was convinced that half the articles on the program were lies. After all, at the end of every segment, the narrator always said, in a sonorous voice: "Believe it.....or not!"

If I can correct one point to bitter engineer's otherwise fine writeup, Ripley's actually began in 1918, which predates the Guinness Book of World Records by a wide margin. It was originally titled "Champs and Chumps" and focused at the beginning solely on sports oddities such as backward jumping and three legged races. Due to the enormous popularity of the strip, Ripley was encouraged to branch out into other areas and to take world trips to collect even more amazing tidbits. It remains quite popular to this day, even though Ripley has been deceased for some 50 odd years. And there is a new show on TBS Wednesday nights hosted by Dean Cain. Truth is stranger than fiction....