Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 284
March 17, 2019
March 16, 2019
March 15, 2019
10-Mile Lake Appears In The Middle Of Death Valley
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[March 10-16th, 2019] An ephemeral lake in the hottest place on Earth, beer for Lent, and a trick to outsmart art thieves in this week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Death Valley Lake
Death Valley is one of the most extreme places in America. Natural surface temperatures can reach over 200 degrees Fahrenheit and the desert has gone years without rain in the past. Seemingly out of nowhere, however, a ten-mile-long lake has appeared in its basin. The unusual conditions were caused by a freak-rainstorm that passed through the valley. Though it dropped just 0.87 inches of rainfall, the dry desert is completely unaccustomed to absorbing water, creating a huge pop-up lake.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Elliot McGucken 45EPIC (@elliotmcgucken) on Mar 9, 2019 at 3:28pm PST
Just Pay the Two (Hundred) Dollars!
A Mississippi lawmaker is testing the limits of common sense in his state. After requesting a document from the State Department of Public Safety, the agency declined his request. In apparent retribution, the Ethics Commission issued them a $200 fine, which, according to The Clarion-Ledger, has since spent $18,000 in legal fees fighting the $200 fine.
Beer For Lent
As we move into Lent, and people all over the world look for vices to cut out of their lives for 40 days, many will consider giving up alcohol. Del Hall of Ohio, however, is giving up food in favor of only drinking beer. He plans to go the entire period on a diet of what he calls “liquid bread.” Just days in, he’s already lost 15 pounds and doesn’t plan to give up yet.
Art Thieves Duped By Fake
The Crucifixion painted by Brueghel the Younger in the 17th century is worth an estimated $3.4 million. Housed in a local church in the small town of Ligura in north-west Italy, thieves broke into its display case with a hammer and absconded with the painting… or so they thought. After a day of public mourning for the loss, police announced they had replaced the original with a fake a month ago when they got wind of the robbery. Churchgoers apparently noticed the change but kept quiet to ensure the sting went off without a hitch.
In The Mouth of A Whale
Photographing Bryde’s whales off the coast of South Africa, Rainer Schimpf found himself firmly locked in the jaws of a whale. Swimming in a bait ball—a swirling group of small fish—Schimpf was completely surprised when things suddenly went dark. He could feel pressure around his abdomen and knew he was in trouble. At the mercy of the 15-ton whale and without SCUBA equipment, he held his breath and hoped for the best. Fortunately, the gentle giant let him go after just a few seconds, leaving Schimpf with the story of a lifetime.
March 14, 2019
If Camel Humps Don’t Contain Water, What’s Inside?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While camels can drink as much as 32 gallons of water in less than 15 minutes, the humps on their backs do not hold H2O. Instead, the animals store fat in their odd-looking protrusions, enabling them to traverse the desert for days when food is scarce. Camels can survive a week without drinking water and several months without eating.
An adult camel can store up to 80 pounds of fat in its humps. When the animals tap into the stored nutritional fat, the humps decrease in size and slump to the side. They become upright again after the camels eat and sleep. The dromedary camel has one hump while the Bactrian camel has two humps.
The reason why camels store fat on their backs and not throughout their bodies may be because the humps are used for insulation and to protect the animals from solar radiation, according to Lunds Universitet in Sweden. Fat conducts heat more gradually than water. Dromedary camels have thick fur on their backs to protect them from the sun’s heat, while the fur is thinner on other parts of their body, allowing heat to escape.
Camels drink a lot of water when they are dehydrated, but they do not store water to use later on. Their bodies are built to conserve liquid. They urinate infrequently, and their pee is very concentrated. A camel’s droppings are also very dry.
Camels have the ability to function with body temperatures over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and they don’t sweat or pant like other animals, who lower their temperature by using water from their bodies. Camels cool down at night when temperatures drop. The desert-dwelling animals aren’t impervious to the heat, but they can lose 30 to 40 percent of their body weight in water and still ward off dehydration. In addition, the mammal uses the air that it inhales and exhales to create water vapor.
Whatever you do, try to avoid being spit on by a camel. Their spit is a mix of saliva and the contents of their stomachs—basically, vomit. They spit when threatened, and the telltale sign is puffy cheeks (so get out of the way!) They also have powerful breath because they regurgitate their food like cows.
Camels also have other interesting abilities. Their super-long eyelashes and inner eyelids protect their peepers from desert sand. They can also close their nostrils to prevent sand from entering their bodies.
Camels are vocal animals who make lots of noises and make various gestures with their heads, necks, ears, and tails to communicate with the herd. They also blow into each other’s faces as a way of greeting one another. Baby camels are born without humps.
Two-humped camels are critically endangered. One named Zehra was born at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio in 2018 and was the first Bactrian camel to be born in captivity in recent history. This species of camel is indigenous to Central and East Asia, and there are reportedly just under 1,000 currently in existence.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
March 13, 2019
The Royal Pup-ital Wedding: Meghan Barkle And Harry Prince Of Tails
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
The two chihuahuas, one dressed in a black royal suit and one in a white wedding dress, complete with a long, billowing veil, were the center of attention at the 2019 New York Pet Fashion Show. Here, guests witnessed the “royal pup-ital wedding.”
Credit: Robin Schwartz
“This is going to be the most spectacular wedding you can imagine, maybe outside of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry,” said Gregg Oehler, chairman of the NY Pet Fashion Show.
According to Oehler, The New York City Pet Fashion Show is the largest pet fashion and animal benefit event in the world. Each year, fashion designers from around the country descend on the venue in Manhattan, with humans and animals alike dressed in flamboyant costumes and fancy dresses. A chihuahua dressed as a royal guard, a disabled dog in a dress attached to her “wheelchair,” and even a mini horse in red and white sequin stripes walked the aisle.
More than a dozen dogs, many either rescued or up for adoption, touted their fashionable wears on the runway. The highlight of the evening, though, was the holy matrimony of Meghan Barkle and Harry Prince of Tails.
Credit: Robin Schwartz
The “minister” of the evening was Rick Johnson, who typically officiates human weddings through his ordination at The Universal Life Church. Tonight would be his first dog wedding–not that Harry and Meghan were eligible for a technically legal union. “New York may not recognize them, but everyone here will,” he said before the ceremony.
The procession started with a short drive in a remote-controlled Mercedes-Benz down a hallway in the upstairs of the Hotel Pennsylvania, which was lined with plastic wrap in case of accidents. In spite of all the excitement, the animals were generally calm and sat patiently for pictures and videos.
Credit: Robin Schwartz
Later, the official marriage ceremony began. “Dearly beloved, and humans too,” Johnson began. Johnson then “translated vows,” citing long walks and watching “Petflix” together. It was presumed that both animals would have said “I do” if they could have.
“I now pronounce you loving partners for life,” he concluded. “Sniffing and licking is now permitted.” Harry and Meghan’s human companions then placed them in a white wagon and pulled it down the aisle as the animals looked out quietly towards the audience. Camera flashes blinked repetitively throughout the room.
While 2019 was the first year that the New York Pet Fashion show took place, the show generally happens every February. The event funds and brings awareness to The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, which is an umbrella group for 150 rescues and shelters. Anyone in the NYC area who is looking for a pet is encouraged to look at pet adoptions. If your rescued pet dresses well enough, they may get to walk the runway at next year’s NY Pet Fashion Show.
Credit: Robin Schwartz
By Kristin Hugo, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: The Royal Pup-ital Wedding: Meghan Barkle And Harry Prince Of Tails
March 12, 2019
100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While evidence of dinosaurs is considered a generally rare discovery, paleontologists are constantly finding new caches of bones and footprints to dig out of the Earth. Dinosaur eggs, however, are much rarer finds.
Like modern day reptiles and birds, most dinosaurs are known to have laid eggs. These eggs were typically laid in a nest by a female and closely guarded until her young dinosaurs hatched. If a predator managed to find a clutch unguarded, they were likely to smash them to pieces as the ravenously consumed the baby dinos. These are the two fates most common for a clutch of dinosaur eggs and why finding wholly intact eggs is exceedingly rare.
In order to be preserved whole, the eggs would have to be covered in sediment rapidly and lost to the protection of their mother. Sudden sandstorms, mudslides, or floods are most commonly responsible for fossilized dinosaur eggs.
The clutch of eggs shown here is from a 100-million-year-old nest belonging to a therizinosaurus. The therizinosaurus is believed to have towered 25 feet tall, standing upright on two legs. Their arms alone are thought to have reached eight feet, and were tipped with huge three-pronged claws. The claws are actually where therizinosaurus gets its name, as it is Greek for scythe—literally the “Scythe lizard.”
CC Woudloper
Though many clutches of eggs and many more claws have been found, scientists have never located skull material for the creature. Due to this, we are still unsure what therizinosaurs ate. Despite their fearsome claws, they were most likely herbivores.
Evidence of the species was first discovered during a Soviet fossil expedition in Mongolia in 1948. Recovering a few of their trademark claws, the expedition first thought they belonged to a type of large diving turtle that used the claws to harvest seaweed. It wasn’t until 1970 that paleontologists understood they belonged to a theropod dinosaur.
Is This Guy The Only Person In The World Who Still Speaks Carny?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Did you know there exists a secret carnival language spoken by professional wrestlers? It’s called Cizarny (or Cizarnizy).
Or, in English, it’s called Carny. It’s not technically a language, per se, but an argot—sort of like Pig Latin. Ripleys.com was able to track down and speak to a disciple of the old guard of professional wrestling and one of Carny’s last fluent speakers, “Retrosexual” Anthony Greene, who made a quick stop from his “Retrobution Tour” to help us learn a little more about the etymology of this quirky linguistic tradition.
One of the last speakers of Carny.
Despite hailing from “Danger Town, USA,” Anthony made an inauspicious beginning in his hometown of Randolph, Massachusetts, where he began learning the tricks of the pro wrestling trade at the age of thirteen. Ever the journeyman, by the age of sixteen Anthony advanced from setting up wrestling rings to refereeing and, two years later, entered the squared circle as a performer himself. Now, at 25, Anthony continues to make live and televised appearances across North America. With his bronzed tan, satin jacket, neon-colored zebra-striped pants, vibrantly matching fanny pack, and flanked with one of his “Platinum Hunnies” on each arm, Anthony appears as if he walked straight out of the eighties and prides himself on being one of the last active “carnies” in the world of wrestling.
The phrase “carny” often carries negative connotations, but not for Anthony: “Carnies were hustlers. Not necessarily in a negative sense. They hustled to make their money, much like I and many other independent professional wrestlers have to do as well. Though being a ‘carny’ can be used as a pejorative, a carny is also a traveler, journeyman, showman, and someone who works hard to earn their keep. It doesn’t have to involve being a con artist. It’s about work ethic.”
The Carny language began with the wrestling industry’s roots in 19th- and early 20th-century fairground circuits. Alongside circus clowns, sideshow strongmen, and freakshow funambulists, professional wrestling was a marquee aspect of any traveling carnival. It didn’t exactly look like the pro wrestling you might see on TV today, though. It was more comparable to modern mixed martial arts. In fact, some of the oldest discovered documents of human history feature recordings of early forms of wrestling. They date back thousands of years and can be found in prehistoric cave paintings, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, records of the first Olympic Games, and as one of the only sports referenced in the Bible!
4,000-year-old wrestling techniques depicted in Beni Hasan, Egypt.
In the United States, wrestling started to grow in popularity as a spectator sport around the time of the Civil War in military camps. Prior to this, in antebellum times, arguably the greatest President in the history of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was a wrestler! Allegedly, not only was Lincoln a near undefeated champion in the Illinois region, but his trash talk part of the grappling game was on point: “I’m the big buck of this lick,” Lincoln once told a stunned crowd, “if any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!”
Ol’ Honest Abe wasn’t the only one laying the smackdown issuing challenges. As wrestling made its way to carnival “at”—athletic—shows, open challenges to the audience for big cash prizes became the norm. For wrestlers, winning these challenges was paramount: losing a legitimate contest against a local would destroy not only the wrestler’s credibility, but the carnival’s as well, not to mention the perceived aptitude of professional wrestlers as a whole. So much as one loss could tank business for wrestling in that town and send the whole carnival packing!
Sometimes, a plant would be placed in the crowd to make a challenge seem easier to encourage the locals to take their best shot or place a bet. One common tactic included a professional wrestler planted in the crowd and posing as a rough-and-tough local attending matinee showings. Full of bravado, they would dramatically answer an open challenge for an event later that evening in an attempt to draw interest and boost ticket sales.
Anthony elaborates: “Many of the wrestlers were called ‘hookers.’ They’d wrestle regular people in attendance until they got tired and then ‘hook’ a submission on them. They’d have longer matches so the other carnival goers believed they had a chance to beat the big-time wrestler.”
During these early days of the craft, performers lived an outlaw lifestyle with an “us versus them” mentality. With all of the rigged contests and games, carnival workers and wrestlers alike needed a way to secretly speak with each other. The answer to that was Carny.
There were different regional versions of Carny, varying from loop-to-loop and racket-to-racket. The most common surviving form of Carny has the “izz” or “eez” sound placed in the middle of words, though some place it in between each syllable. “To demonstrate,” the mustachioed Anthony says with a point to the fuzzy handlebar donning his upper lip, “mizusstizache.”
“Reading it makes it sound simple enough,” Anthony continues, “but when you’re hearing it and not in on the gimmick, it’s a whole ‘nother world!”
Up until the eighties, Carny was a must-know aspect of the trade if you wanted to be a professional wrestler. But these days, far fewer are fluent in it. While professional wrestling has largely outgrown its formative years as a sideshow attraction, the age-old adage proves true: you can take professional wrestling out of the carnival, but you can’t take the carnival out of professional wrestling. Carny is an indelible component of the industry’s bloodline, Anthony feels: “For some, the past is the past. For me, the past is the future. Though Carny is a dying art, I feel that learning the rich history of professional wrestling is important. It’s the history of how it turned into what we do today. It’s viewed as a badge of honor if you still go out of your way to learn the ‘secret language’ our wrestling forefathers spoke. I’ve gone to local county fairs for a few tours and some of the game coordinators still speak a little Carny to this day!”
CC Andrew Dunn
Despite falling out of use over the years, some Carny parlance is still present in modern English; for example, the phrase “mark”—meaning a person who is an easy target. This was adopted from physical chalk marks that carnival workers would place on patrons who were looking to impress a date. This was a signal to their coworkers that they had cash to spend. Carny even reached the world of hip-hop with Frankie Smith’s Double Dutch Bus in 1981, which in turn would go on to inspire the mainstream diction of rap icon Snoop Dogg, fo shizzle.
CC The Come Up Show
Another use of Carny in the modern world is professional wrestling’s code of silence, “kayfabe.” The wrasslin’ version of omerta is used as a warning that outsiders were around, to stay in character and “be fake.” In the past, professional wrestlers were fiercely secretive, often going to such lengths as breaking bones or even throwing fireballs at the overly-curious fans who proved to be a bit too intrepid. Anthony admits that if he was caught telling us all of this back in the day, he’d be in for a whole world of hurt, “and I’m too good looking for that to happen to me!”
Believe It… Or Nizot!
Kris Levin is a professional wrestling referee and everybody’s favorite nephew. He can be seen internationally on IMPACT Wrestling as their most junior official, #KidRef, and on social media at @RefKrisLevin.
Source: Is This Guy The Only Person In The World Who Still Speaks Carny?
Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog
- Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s profile
- 52 followers
