Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 179
October 10, 2020
October 9, 2020
Australian Woman Has Larvae On Her Mind
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[October 5-October 11, 2020] A curling robot, beefy bears, and some questionable bread—all round-up in this week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Curly the Robot Throws Stones Against Pros
This week, a robot named Curly went wheel-to-toe with professional South Korean curling teams, winning three out of four matches. While it may seem like a sample game of swatting discs across the ice, curling is actually extremely difficult, requiring so much strategy that it has been called “chess on ice.”
In a game where one false move can instantly change the game’s outcome, players act as machines to precisely move the 40-pound-stone down the course. Korea University researchers, Seong-Whan Lee and Dong-Ok Won, and Klaus-Robert Müeller at the Berlin Institute of Technology, set out to see if a robot could use artificial intelligence to make these same strategic decisions. According to Brook Hays of United Press International,” AI machines often perform well in simulations, but struggle to cope in the real world, a problem known as the ‘sim-to-real gap.’
Curly uses two robots that communicate to aim and push the stone down the ice, while it wheels around and rotates the stone using a conveyor belt. Cameras on its head show the robot both the field and the “hogline,” where players release the stone, which the robot uses while competing to assess risk and uncontrollable environmental conditions. Curly learned how to adapt to unexpected challenges as it played, adjusting its throw each time. The creators credit Curly’s success to its “adaptive deep reinforcement learning framework.”
Robots aren’t just coming for our jobs, they’re coming for our sports. A bot named Curly just mastered curling, and beat two Korean national teams: https://t.co/kkyJ9O6Wns pic.twitter.com/W1OX8dOGR2
— WIRED (@WIRED) September 28, 2020
Brawny Bear Reigns Fattest of Them All
After months of chowing down on salmon, this bulky Alaskan brown bear has been deemed the fattest of them all in Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Fat Bear Week competition! Bear 747 went all-in for this year’s “survival of the fattest” competition, narrowly edging out another husky guy, named Chunk. According to park representatives, the beefy bruin’s weight in July could have been sufficient for hibernation, but he continued to stock up for winter, eating dozens of salmon a day.
Fat Bear Week is an annual celebration of the park’s chubby cubbies where 12 of the 2,200 bears that roam the area are selected for the public to weigh in on which one is the fattest—nay, healthiest—with this year’s voting taking place online. Being a bear, 747 was completely unaware of this body-positive celebration. “When asked what he intends to do now that he has won, the only response was a look back before going back to fishing in the jacuzzi near the Brook Falls, one of his favorite spots,” said a park representative. Stay humble and hungry, 747.
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Bodies At The Bottom Of The Barrel
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While October may signify the start of Spooky Season for many, here at Ripley’s we’d venture to say, it’s always spooky season. We’re pouring one out for a truly spooky time in history where hour of death meets happy hour, and people quite literally reached the bottom of the barrel.
Ah, 1828 the year of the railroad. The very first common carrier, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was born, and from then on, the world of transportation, timing, and crime would never be the same. Today, we view trains as a means to get people and other goods from point A to point B. And, nearly 200 years ago, they had a very similar viewpoint, aside from the fact that people and goods essentially fell into the same category.
Though there were many benefits to this new mode of transportation, it also came with some pretty severe consequences. During this time, Baltimore was a true hotspot for those in the grave snatching business. The city was filled with prestigious medical schools which meant that in order to conduct research or further investigate human anatomy, they needed bodies—and lots of them. The demand for products was high, and the climate was basically ideal for diggers. The grounds were located in a temperate zone with little to no frozen soil, regardless of the season.
Why, might you ask, would people willingly dig up freshly deceased bodies? We don’t have to be the one to tell you, it was all about the money. At this time, in the United States, there was no standard procedure for receiving these medical subjects. Schools needed dissection material and were willing to pay to get it. They sent every staff member from students to the cleaning crew to the doctors themselves to take on this grim way to make some green.
As one can imagine, plundering the ground to retrieve a freshly buried corpse, was no easy task. The diggers began by shoveling at the head of the coffin. They broke the lid with their shovels and secured a large hook around the victim’s neck or armpit. Like clockwork, they tugged on this makeshift rope pulley system to hoist the body from its peaceful resting place.
But, their greedy ways don’t stop at the grave! Like any good delivery, shipping was included in this gruesome act. To send the body elsewhere, the snatchers weren’t able to just waltz down the street, making the freshly invented railroad system their new best friend.
We know what you’re thinking—the stench on these trains must have been totally rancid. When you’re in the business as often as these snatchers were, you come to learn a thing or two about discretely transporting bodies. The corpses were folded up into barrels and filled to the top with whiskey to mask the outrageous odor. At the final destination, the medical professionals removed the remains from their alcoholic state and began procedures.
Unfortunately, the thirst for a little extra cash didn’t end there. The leftover “rotgut” whiskey from inside these transportation barrels was actually sold to the public as “stiff drinks.”
While other areas, like Central Europe, had far more ethical ways of retrieving dead subjects for their schools, no such process existed in the U.S. In fact, while technically one could be charged with a misdemeanor for the act of grave digging, people were seldom prosecuted for doing so.
Politicians protected the act. Lawyers knew the way to argue it. Policemen looked the other way. And the cemeteries themselves were often in on the action. However, some body snatchers weren’t so lucky to be simply let off the hook.
William Burke and William Hare were two gentlemen who were a bit too impatient to be grave diggers. Rather than wait around for people to die naturally, they resorted to the quicker option: murder. Over the course of a year, the two murdered 16 people to sell their bodies to Dr. Robert Knox, an independent lecturer of anatomy in Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Square. They lured their victims into the bar, got them excessively drunk, and suffocated them in the height of their intoxicated stupor. This practice of killing and selling bodies became aptly known as “Burking.” After finally being prosecuted for the act, Burke was sentenced to be hanged in January of 1829.
However, this was not the end of grave diggers or their morbid career paths. It wasn’t until 1900, many years after the state Anatomy Board was created to allocate unclaimed corpses, that the trafficking finally ended.
And speaking of medical corpses, it just so happens we have a piece from this historical time in our own Ripley’s collection. Though it certainly took more than half a head to figure out brain surgeries and cranial operations, we have these involuntary corpses to thank for many medicinal successes. Be sure to check out more rarities like this one inside the pages of our 17th annual, Mind Blown!
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON!
Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!
October 8, 2020
October 7, 2020
October 6, 2020
Hoppin’ Bottles With Circus Artist LadyBEAST
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
They say that life can be a delicate balancing act, but for the New Orleans circus artist known as LadyBEAST, this playful expression is truly her livelihood. This poised performer stuns audiences with her aerial bottle-walking feats!
Balanced atop thin necked champagne bottles, LadyBEAST walks and dances across their narrow uncorked openings. Leaving her audiences breathless with her seemingly effortless tiptoe, the feats of illusion and magic don’t stop there.
She also specializes in Houdini-style performances, where her escape artistry puts crowds on the edges of their seats. In fact, back in 2018, she became the first woman to escape a straitjacket all while hanging from her ankles dangling from a hot air balloon! The balloon hoisted her nearly 100 feet in the air—10 stories high—and after escaping, she hung by her elbow and descended safely to the ground with no safety harness.
There’s no telling what unbelievable feat she will conquer next, but we certainly are eager to find out! Read more about LadyBEAST in Ripley’s newest book, Mind Blown!, and keep up with us on social media for exclusive interviews and performances by LadyBEAST, herself!
THE STRANGEST STORIES OF THE YEAR
Now that you’ve read the strangest stories of the week, how about the strangest stories of the year? Ripley’s all-new annual is an all-true collection of incredible facts, unexpected stories, and stunning photography!
October 5, 2020
October 4, 2020
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