Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 266
June 24, 2019
June 23, 2019
June 22, 2019
June 21, 2019
Fish Eggs Survive Swan Digestion And Hatch
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
This Week
[June 16-22nd, 2019] Some tough fish eggs, a 103-year-old hurricane, whale graveyards, and the rest of the week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Hatching From Swan Feces
Seeds are well-known for surviving the voyage through a bird’s digestive system, only to be spread far and wide to propagate. Apparently, fish eggs can benefit from the same thing! Researchers in the Journal Of Ecology observed at least one killifish egg making the hours-long trip through a swans’ digestive system, surviving, and then hatching 49 days later!
103-Year-Old Breaks Sprinting Record
Julia Hawkins, better known as the “Hurricane,” ran the 50-meter-dash in 46 seconds. While top athletes have run the same distance around the six-second mark, none of them were over a hundred years old. The Hurricane began running at 101 and set her record in the senior games.
Making Bureaucracy Fun
In an effort to bring more transparency to citizens, Pakistani regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai live-streamed a press conference on Facebook. While he answered very serious questions to a slew of a dozen microphones, no one present noticed that a cat filter was on, giving him a pair of pink ears and black whiskers. The stream was eventually taken down, and an investigation was promised, but reports say it was a simple mistake made by a volunteer.
pakistan live facebook debate still has the cat filter on lol ! pic.twitter.com/ABDH7IN9jA
— Neiljetel (@neiljetel) June 17, 2019
Radioactive Cake?
Author Alidad Lye’s cousin wanted nothing more than a cake featuring Mariah Carey for her birthday, but, after a mix-up with the baker, she didn’t end up with the vocalist renowned for her Christmas song. Instead, she got a stern rendering of the chemist and physicist who pioneered the study of radioactivity, Marie Curie. No word on whether the cake was radioactive, but party guests made sure it’s half-life was short.
My cousin in England told her colleagues she wanted a Mariah Carey birthday cake. They misunderstood, and is the cake they made her instead. It’s Marie Curie, looking very festive. pic.twitter.com/LMHJnMATqD
— Harriet Alida Lye (@harrietalida) June 14, 2019
Volunteer Whale Graveyards
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking coastal volunteers to offer up their backyards for dead whales to decompose. About 30 gray whales—the most in 20 years—have washed ashore along the Washington coastline, and officials are running out of suitable places for them to decompose. Mario Rivera and his wife let fishery officials tow the whale to their property. Veterinary scientists themselves, they look forward to studying the process of the whale being recycled by nature, noting that the smell isn’t too bad.
Mario Rivera/NOAA
June 20, 2019
The Origins Of Fortune Cookies Are Neither Chinese Nor American
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Believe It or Not! the tasty fortune cookies that come with your Chinese take-out weren’t invented in China. The concept for the tiny after-dinner desserts actually originated in Japan and spread to America at the turn of the century!
Some bakeries outside of Kyoto, Japan, make what look like bigger, darker-colored fortune cookies that have messages inside their creases. These senbei, or “crackers” were invented in the late 19th century—if not earlier—and are still being made in Japan today.
In the early 1900s, Japanese immigrants in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, made senbei at their bakeries. A few local Chinese restaurants lacked desserts on their menu, so they started procuring the Japanese crackers to sell to their own customers. It’s believed the cookies were first produced in America sometime between 1907 and 1914.
Their popularity really took off following World War II when veterans returned to the west coast after the conflict and asked for the treat when they visited their favorite Chinese eateries.
According to researcher Yasuko Nakamachi, fortune cookie production was likely taken over by Chinese-owned manufacturers during the war when Japanese bakeries closed and many of their owners were sent to Japanese-American internment camps.
When Japanese-Americans were interred during the war, many businesses had to be abandoned.
By the late ‘50s, dozens of Chinese bakeries and fortune cookie companies were making an estimated 250 million cookies every year. In the ‘60s, a man named Edward Louie founded Lotus Fortune in San Francisco and created an automatic fortune cookie machine.
CC mliu92
Despite their Japanese origin, fortune cookies became an iconic treat because of the Chinese-Americans who popularized them over the years. As of 2008, three billion fortune cookies were produced each year almost entirely in the United States. China does not serve them, but countries such as Britain, Mexico, Italy, and France do.
Wonton Food Inc., based in Queens, N.Y., produces an estimated 4.5 million fortune cookies per day. In the early ‘90s, Wonton tried to expand its business to China but failed. Some Chinese were so unaware of the cookies and their purpose they inadvertently ate the fortunes.
Wonton employs a Chief Fortune Writer to come up with new fortunes each year. Back in the ‘80s, fortune cookies typically resembled horoscopes, i.e., “You will be successful.” They evolved and these days often feature sayings that make people happy, such as “You have a natural grace and great consideration for others” and “Every exit is an entrance to new experiences.”
There is a team of Wonton Food employees that approves the fortunes before they’re released. The company also receives a lot of feedback, both good and bad, about its fortunes. One man thanked Wonton for a cookie that promised a new opportunity was coming his way (he landed a new job). Another customer criticized Wonton after her husband opened a fortune that suggested he would find love on his next business trip. In 2005, over 100 lottery players won $19 million after playing the “lucky numbers” on the back of Wonton fortunes, which resulted in an investigation.
Regardless of where fortune cookies originated, they are a delicious treat. But what we really want to know is how do they get the messages into the tiny treats? Wonton isn’t spilling. It’s an “ancient Chinese secret,” according to the company.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: The Origins Of Fortune Cookies Are Neither Chinese Nor American
June 19, 2019
The Cardiff Giant: A Stone Man’s Secrets
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The Cardiff Giant
In the Fall of 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols made a monumental archaeological discovery. They were digging a well on a farm outside Cardiff, New York, for a man named William Newell. Three feet down, they hit stone, and as they cleared away the dirt, they made out what seemed to be a human foot!
“I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!”
A Petrified Man
Unearthing the whole body, they discovered a 10-foot tall petrified man, who would come to be known as the Cardiff Giant. The Giant hadn’t been reduced to a skeleton but appeared to have been petrified, and now made entirely of stone. Ribs, an Adam’s apple, skin pores, and even a benevolent smile were all apparent on the stone figure.
Newell immediately opened the giant’s tomb up for viewing, and carriages, buses, horse riders, and buggies came from all over to see what religious scholars were calling a giant that had perished in Noah’s flood. He initially charged 25 cents for entry, but quickly doubled it as the roads leading to his farm became choked with people.
Away from the bustle, inside the viewing tent, onlookers fell silent, and no one dared speak above a whisper in the presence of such a profound specimen. Light fell from the center of the tent on the giant lying in his grave. One arm cradled his stomach, as if in the throes of death pain, but his gentle smile was cemented in a state of eternal serenity. America’s attention was fixed on the Cardiff Giant, and scientists were even coming out with explanations on how the giant had come to be petrified.
At this time in history, emerging science and sideshow hoaxes were raging with popularity. P. T. Barnum himself offered to pay $50,000 for a share of Howell’s giant and to move it to New York City. When Howell refused, Barnum sent agents into view the statue up close, and had an exact replica created. This fake Cardiff Giant proved just as popular as the original, with few people calling it a fake at first.
All a Hoax
The original statue was, of course, a forgery too, planted there by Newell’s friend George Hull. Both men were in on the hoax, but the idea came to Hull—an atheist—after arguing with a priest for hours about literal interpretations of the bible. Hull lie awake all night that evening, trying to think of the most ridiculous thing people would believe, and eventually came up with the idea of the Cardiff hoax.
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4
Hull spent years and thousands of dollars constructing the Cardiff Giant. All the work had to be done in secret as well. The 5-ton block of stone used to make the statue under the premise it was going to be carved into a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
He took the stone to a pair of sculptors in Chicago, posing as the model for the statue himself. When the carving was complete, they doused the whole thing in acid to give the stone a weathered look.
News about the origins of this pre-flood giant eventually got out, and legitimate scientists decried it as a hoax. As pressures mounted, Howell and Hull sold the statue before admitting everything in a newspaper exposé. Hull had accomplished his goal though, he had made his point about the gullibility of the public, and make a fistful of cash along the way.
The Petrified Man Craze
Just seven years after the Cardiff Giant, “The Solid Muldoon” was found in the mountains of Colorado, but was once again a hoax perpetrated by George Hull! Unlike the Cardiff Giant, the Solid Muldoon had been made out of a mixture of dust, clay, plaster, bones, blood, and meat. By this time, the giant rush was in full force, and petrified men were popping up all over. Hotels and tricksters began cooking up their own giants as marketing stunts, none holding up under basic scrutiny, but still managing to collect up to $1 a person to see these giant forgeries.
Though Barnum had offered $50,000 for the Cardiff Giant, by the time mustachioed and side-burned novelty giants were hitting the scene, the fake giant market crashed. A petrified man “found” in Wind Cave, South Dakota, sold for just $2,000.
As the giants truly went extinct, most were destroyed, fell apart, or were lost to time. The hoax that started it all, however, survived and was returned to New York. It’s on display at the Cooperstown Farmer’s Museum, underneath a tent just like the one Howell displayed it under 150 years ago.
June 18, 2019
Petrified Produce: Fruit Turned To Stone
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While most people are familiar with petrified wood, almost any organic substance is susceptible to petrification, given the right circumstances.
Fossils are created when an organic material—like a dinosaur skeleton—is permeated and replaced by minerals. The best examples create nearly perfect replicas of the original object and contain much of the original material of the subject. While dinosaur fossils are somewhat rare, petrified wood is fairly common. The minerals prone to petrification—like quartz and pyrite—often give fossilized trees an iridescent shine that cultures across the planet have long found pleasing. It’s typical to find bowls, jewelry, and sculptures using petrified wood.
While wood and bone are typically the only things strong enough to hold up against the rigorous process of petrification, in rare cases, other more delicate objects can be turned to stone as well.
Petrified fruit has been found dating back to the third century in Egypt. An example in the Metropolitan Museum was excavated in Egypt in 1923, and experts believe it survived centuries underneath the city of Thebes. While citrus seems to be the most common fruit to undergo petrification, the Ripley collection also houses petrified apples, peaches, and pears.
A fully petrified piece of produce may seem slightly decomposed on the outside—the skin bearing the brunt of weathering—but inside, the intricate folds of its flesh are fully retained, rendered in stone.
Details match the original at the microscopic level. The texture of the skin still show the trademark dimples of citrus. It’s unclear exactly what conditions cause perfect petrification of fruits possible. Some petrified oranges have been found in riverbeds, while others were discovered in arid environments. Either way, it would the process probably takes place when the fruit isn’t subject to mold or bacteria. The longer the fruits resisted rotting, the more time minerals had to move in and petrify the object.
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