Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 292
January 30, 2019
Abandoned Shark Found In Defunct Wildlife Park
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Luke McPherson was walking through a dark building in an abandoned wildlife park when he came across a huge tank of murky green liquid. Passing by the tank and continuing into the building, he saw scattered remnants of educational displays, trash, disused signs, and chairs. It wasn’t until he stepped behind the tank and turned to face it again that he saw what it held.
Now illuminated from behind, the animal inside the opaque fluid revealed itself. McPherson gasped as he could see the angular tail of a five-meter-long shark, long dead, a dark silhouette waiting silently against the green glow of sunlight.
McPherson was filming for his Youtube channel, which focuses on the exploration of abandoned buildings. Luckily, he caught the discovery on camera. “It was just amazing that the shark tank was just in perfect condition,” he said.
This is what remains of an enormous display of something like taxidermy, reminiscent of the artist Damien Hirst’s most famous piece. The shark that McPherson found is bigger, though.
This wildlife park was once a popular attraction in Victoria, Australia called “Wildlife Wonderland.” It had live animals and a museum shaped like a 100-meter-long earthworm, along with educational displays and games. Many of the displays, signs, pictures, and games are still there, dilapidated and haunting.
While the park in its heyday remains a fond memory for many who grew up in this area around Bass, Victoria, it closed in 2012. According to some reports, the park didn’t have a license to display native animals, in violation of the Wildlife Act 1975. The operator was evicted and he closed down the park, giving the animals to DSE and the RSPCA.
Well, the live animals, anyway. The shark remains.
The shark, a great white named “Rosie,” died in a tuna fishing net in 1998. This fate is all too common for sharks; Oceana calls accidental catches from the fishing industry “one of the biggest issues facing sharks today.” An artist took Rosie, preserved her body, and gave her to Wildlife Wonderland. According to Robert Jones, who half owned the park from 2003-2006, Rosie was never gutted, unlike most fish and taxidermy, and the body is as hard as a rock.
It’s not clear what chemicals were used to preserve this particular animal in what is known as “chemical fixation,” but McPherson could smell something. “It was quite a strong smell that came from that solution too, because people had removed the top part of the tank,” he said. “It was almost a glue smell.”
Because the top part of the tank was removed, the liquid appears to be evaporating, leaving the tip of Rosie’s dorsal fin extending ominously above the waterline. If no one comes to preserve the shark, more liquid will evaporate, her condition will worsen, and she will most likely be destroyed.
Whatever happens to Rosie’s body, she’ll live on in photos, videos, and memories of those who visited her in Wildlife Wonderland.
By Kristin Hugo, contributor for Ripleys.com
January 29, 2019
The Katar: India’s Punch Dagger
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Hailing from the Indian sub-continent, the katar is a push dagger renowned for quick and devastating attacks.
With an iron handguard, the blade of the weapon wasn’t attached to a tubular hilt like most swords of the world, but instead sat atop the wielder’s knuckles, allowing for maximum thrust. Wider than the daggers of medieval Europe, this weapon was incredibly sturdy. Instead of being slender to pierce armor with precision, the brute strength of the kata allowed users to pierce mail armor.
Not just meant for attacking, the thick blade of the katar was also strong enough to block blows without bending or breaking. Some of these daggers would even incorporate hand guards into their designs, eventually paving the way for a similar weapon, the pata.
A pata sword.
Katar were originally seen as a status weapon and depicted at the sides of powerful Rajput and Mughals. Recognized as a paragon of lethality, nobles would even hunt for tigers armed only with two katar, earning great respect if they were successful. These noblemen often had their katar inlaid with ornate etchings or even leafed with gold.
Katar varied considerably in the 1800s. Southern tribes often had wavy blades, and some katar contained a mechanism allowing them to scissor, an action that could cause fatal bleeding. The two cross-bars could be squeezed together, opening the blade into two pieces, with a smaller blade at the center. Katar can be as small as just a few inches and as long as three feet.
Because katar are gripped with the blade facing away from the top of the fist, fighters were able to employ more acrobatic styles of fighting, making freedom of movement and speed paramount.
As the British occupation grew, more modern innovations—like firearms—were incorporated into katar, making them even more lethal. A legendary cult known as the Thugee was said to wander the roads wielding katars against travelers. Believe it or not, the western proliferation of these stories is where we get the word “thug.”
Source: The Katar: India’s Punch Dagger
January 28, 2019
The Disgusting Food Museum Will Make You Vomit
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Have you ever eaten bull penis or vomit fruit? What about roasted guinea pigs or frog smoothies? These are some of the items you can check out at the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden, which aims to introduce visitors to a variety of snacks from different cultures. You can even smell and taste a few of them.
“The smell stations include such delicacies as surströmming (fermented herring), Hákarl (fermented shark), stinky tofu, durian fruit and some of the worst smelling cheeses in the world,” museum director Andreas Ahrens told Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! “Visitors can also taste salty licorice, durian, su callu cheese, Swedish caviar, and century eggs.”
Durian is the world’s smelliest fruit—described by one food writer as a mix of onions, turpentine, and gym socks. Su callu cheese is made from the stomach of a baby goat filled with its mother’s milk and tastes a little like gasoline. The Chinese delicacy century eggs, also known as hundred-year or thousand-year eggs, have a hint of ammonia attached to them.
The museum is the brainchild of Dr. Samuel West, who sought out protein substitutes after reading an article on meat consumption’s effect on the environment. Ahrens explained that meat alternatives may seem unappealing to the uninitiated but may be necessary in the long run.
“We can’t keep eating as much meat as we do, so we might have to shift to protein sources that might seem disgusting at first, like insects and lab-grown meat,” Ahrens explained. “Another goal is to inspire visitors to not judge the food of other cultures as critically but realize that disgust is personal and subjective, shaped by our upbringing.”
Foods eligible for the exhibit are required to have potential vomit-inducing characteristics based on their smell, flavor, texture, and/or presentation. But they also need to be tastefully pleasing in some part of the world.
Maggot-infested casu marzu/CC Shardan
The museum’s employees have sampled about 50 of the 80 disgusting foods on display. Ahrens’ favorite exhibit is Casu Marzu, the maggot cheese from Sardinia.
“I absolutely love the Casu Marzu,” he revealed. “It’s a beautiful exhibit, the larvae can jump up to 15 cm [six inches] so you have to cover your eyes when you eat it.”
While Ahrens hasn’t tasted the larvae-infested cheese yet, he plans on visiting the Mediterranean island next summer for a sample.
Other notable foods in the exhibit include spicy rabbit heads from China, fermented mare’s milk from Kazakhstan, an Asian wine made of baby mice, and sheep eyeball juice.
Sesame-topped spicy rabbit heads from China.
While many people may throw up a little in their mouths thinking about consuming these delicacies, Ahrens and his colleagues have managed to keep their food down while working on the exhibit (he says they’ve become quite desensitized). But not everyone has such a strong stomach.
“My wife is responsible for two of the nine vomits we’ve had so far at the museum,” he admitted.
The exhibit also includes several American foods, such as rocky mountain oysters, a.k.a. bull testicles; Spam; Jello-o salad; and root beer, which tastes like toothpaste to many people who did not grow up on the carbonated beverage.
America’s contributions to the museum.
Visitors can participate in the “Taste one for the Team” challenge, which has them sampling disgusting foods on an escalating scale. “There are no winners, only losers,” Ahrens said. “It could be rocky mountain oysters, balut eggs with duck fetuses inside or stinky toe fruit.”
So far, museumgoers have been reacting very positively to the exhibit and typically spend a couple of hours there. “Many have mentioned that the visit has changed their dietary choices, like eating less meat or incorporating insects into their meals,” Ahrens noted.
The museum was scheduled to be a temporary exhibit with a three-month run ending January 27, 2019. However, organizers are considering extending its duration and there are plans for a touring exhibit.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
January 27, 2019
January 26, 2019
January 25, 2019
Canada’s Quest To Build A Taller Moose Than Norway
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[January 20-26th, 2019] Canada faces Norway in a giant moose-off, a Louisiana optometrist offers free eye exams, alligators freeze in place, and the rest of the week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Mac the Moose Vs. Storelgen
When the town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Canada, erected a 32-foot-tall moose statue weighing over 22,000 pounds, they never expected to be out-moosed by any other town in the world. Thirty-one years later, a statue 150 miles north of Oslo, Norway, however, has knocked its Canadian counterpart—known as Mac the Moose—into second place in a contest of height by a mere foot. Moose Jaw’s mayor isn’t having it and is mobilizing the town to take measures to ensure their Moose gets the title back, but the Norwegians aren’t backing down either, promising to take measures of their own to make their moose taller if need be.
Mac the Moose (left/CC JohnnyW3) and Storelgen (right/Mariusz, Shutterstock)
Free Eye Exams For Refs
After a narrow defeat by the Los Angeles Rams, Louisiana Family Eyecare is offering free exams to NFL referees. The announcement came after the seven rules officials on the field dialed to make a pass interference call on a play that resulted in the Saint’s loss.
Town Silenced
The mayor of Cremona, Italy, has ordered silence throughout the town’s bustling center. People speak in whispers and traffic has been diverted, all to aid in the recording of some of the world’s finest instruments. Home of 17th-century instrument maker Antonio Stradivari, the town is recording every sound produced by the instruments in hopes of saving their unique sounds from the rigors of time.
Snorkeling Gators
Residents of Ocean Isla Beach in North Carolina spotted an interesting technique alligators have for surviving the cold. Cold blooded themselves, they stay in the water to keep warm—the air is actually much more dangerous for them. While submerged, however, they run the risk of being frozen in place so they stick their noses just out of the water so they can breathe even if they can’t move in a behavior called snorkeling.
Scotland’s Ancient Circle From The 1990s
Earlier this year, Scottish historians thought they had made a momentous discovery. They found a series of ancient-looking stones arranged in a circle. At the time, they believed it was constructed by ancient humans, much like Stonehenge, and even claimed it was 4,000 years old. Local townsfolk, however, informed them the stones were actually placed there in the 1990s as a replica of an ancient stone structure.
Neil Ackerman: Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service
The Wonderful And Strange Abita Mystery House
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
From voodoo and vampires to swamps and Spears (Britney, that is) Louisiana has its fair share of oddities. Tucked away in Abita Springs, this Mystery House takes the king cake!
The Abita Mystery House is a rambling labyrinth of buildings that each house a different collection. Entering through a vintage gas station and into an old Creole cottage, curious visitors are overwhelmed with the odd. 
Artist and Mystery House curator, John Preble, has spent years collecting found objects and creating unusual inventions for this roadside attraction!
Preble’s collection includes interactive dioramas of Southern life. Preble used a variety of recyclable materials, lights, and motors to make this Mardi Gras scene move! The flying saucer spins, the French Quarter balcony rocks and the float riders dance!
Preble used his taxidermy skills to create Darrell the “Dogigator.” Half-alligator, half-dog, Darrell guards a collection of antique barbed wire!
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