Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 297
January 3, 2019
Was The World’s Oldest Person A Fraud? New Research Suggests…
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Or Not
In today’s world many misconceptions have been perpetuated—becoming modern day “facts”—when, in reality, myths and hearsay have taken over. Sorry to burst your bubble, but in this weekly column, Ripley’s puts those delusions to the test, turning your world upside down, because you can’t always…Believe It!
Today
: Was the oldest living person a fraud?
French woman Jeanne Calment, who holds the title as the world’s oldest person, may have faked her age, according to Russian researchers. Calment was reportedly 122 years and 164 days old when she passed away over two decades ago in 1997.
Mathematician Nikolai Zak, a member of the Society of Naturalists of Moscow University, concluded in his paper, Jeanne Calment: The Secret of Longevity, that Calment may have stolen her mother’s identity in order to avoid paying taxes. He claims she wasn’t even a centenarian when she died.
Zak examined various documents from Arles, France, where Calment resided, including photos, archives, biographies and other information. He also conducted a series of interviews about Calment. It should be noted that his research was not peer-reviewed and includes some circumstantial evidence.
Jeanne Calment at 22.
“The analysis of all these documents led me to the conclusion that the daughter of Jeanne Calment, Yvonne, took the identity of her mother,” Zak told the Agence France-Press [AFP]. Gerontologist Valeri Novoselov backs up Zak’s research. The expert on the elderly had suspicions about Calment’s age because the French woman was able to sit without support and did not exhibit signs of dementia.
One document that researchers uncovered revealed that Calment’s daughter, Yvonne, died in 1934 of pleurisy—a medical condition that causes the lining of the lungs and chest to be inflamed. Zak believes that Jeanne died and Yvonne “borrowed the identity” of her mother so she wouldn’t be required to pay exorbitant inheritance taxes.
Other evidence includes an ID card issued to Jeanne in the 1930s that features a different hair color and height than the woman had in later years.
Another discrepancy involves a maid that Jeanne said accompanied her to school. Novoselov found the maid’s birth certificate, which proved the maid was actually 10 years younger than Jeanne, meaning she “could only be taking her daughter Yvonne to school.”
Calment’s birth certificate.
The researchers were also skeptical because Jeanne disposed of most of her personal documents instead of submitting them to a local archive in Arles, which implies she may have been concealing information.
“Intentional, remote destruction of photos and family archives after moving to the nursing home suggests that Jeanne had something to hide,” writes Zak. But he also states that it’s not uncommon for centenarians to destroy personal records.
Calment was likely 99 years old when she died in 1997, not 122. Considering that the average life expectancy for Americans is 78.7 years, that’s impressive. But it’s not record-breaking.
Still, some believe the supercentenarian was telling the truth and was not an imposter, including French gerontologist Jean-Marie Robine who certified the woman’s age in the 1990s. Robine and his colleagues thoroughly investigated Calment’s background and asked her questions only she could answer, such as the name of her math teacher.
Robine points out that it would have been very difficult to keep such a secret for 80 years, noting, for example, that it is “preposterous” that Fernand Calment, Jeanne’s husband, would start passing off his daughter as his wife and no one would say anything about it.
Yvonne’s death certificate would also have had to be deliberately falsified to make the scheme work. Since neither a doctor nor coroner confirmed her death, it’s possible.
To determine the truth, Nicolas Brouard, the director of research at the French Institute of Demographic Studies, said an exhumation of Jeanne and Yvonne Calment’s bodies is necessary.
If Calment was a fraud, then who lays claim to the title of oldest person in the world? American Sarah Knauss, who died in 1999 at the age of 119.
Americans’ life expectancy has dropped over the last couple of years because of substance abuse and a decrease in emotional wellbeing. An uptick in suicides and diseases such as diabetes have also had an effect on lifespan. Meanwhile, the country with the highest life expectancy is Monaco (89.5 years).
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: Was The World’s Oldest Person A Fraud? New Research Suggests…
Was the World’s Oldest Person A Fraud? New Research Suggests…
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Or Not
In today’s world many misconceptions have been perpetuated—becoming modern day “facts”—when, in reality, myths and hearsay have taken over. Sorry to burst your bubble, but in this weekly column, Ripley’s puts those delusions to the test, turning your world upside down, because you can’t always…Believe It!
Today
: Was the oldest living person a fraud?
French woman Jeanne Calment, who holds the title as the world’s oldest person, may have faked her age, according to Russian researchers. Calment was reportedly 122 years and 164 days old when she passed away over two decades ago in 1997.
Mathematician Nikolai Zak, a member of the Society of Naturalists of Moscow University, concluded in his paper, Jeanne Calment: The Secret of Longevity, that Calment may have stolen her mother’s identity in order to avoid paying taxes. He claims she wasn’t even a centenarian when she died.
Zak examined various documents from Arles, France, where Calment resided, including photos, archives, biographies and other information. He also conducted a series of interviews about Calment. It should be noted that his research was not peer-reviewed and includes some circumstantial evidence.
Jeanne Calment at 22.
“The analysis of all these documents led me to the conclusion that the daughter of Jeanne Calment, Yvonne, took the identity of her mother,” Zak told the Agence France-Press [AFP]. Gerontologist Valeri Novoselov backs up Zak’s research. The expert on the elderly had suspicions about Calment’s age because the French woman was able to sit without support and did not exhibit signs of dementia.
One document that researchers uncovered revealed that Calment’s daughter, Yvonne, died in 1934 of pleurisy—a medical condition that causes the lining of the lungs and chest to be inflamed. Zak believes that Jeanne died and Yvonne “borrowed the identity” of her mother so she wouldn’t be required to pay exorbitant inheritance taxes.
Other evidence includes an ID card issued to Jeanne in the 1930s that features a different hair color and height than the woman had in later years.
Another discrepancy involves a maid that Jeanne said accompanied her to school. Novoselov found the maid’s birth certificate, which proved the maid was actually 10 years younger than Jeanne, meaning she “could only be taking her daughter Yvonne to school.”
Calment’s birth certificate.
The researchers were also skeptical because Jeanne disposed of most of her personal documents instead of submitting them to a local archive in Arles, which implies she may have been concealing information.
“Intentional, remote destruction of photos and family archives after moving to the nursing home suggests that Jeanne had something to hide,” writes Zak. But he also states that it’s not uncommon for centenarians to destroy personal records.
Calment was likely 99 years old when she died in 1997, not 122. Considering that the average life expectancy for Americans is 78.7 years, that’s impressive. But it’s not record-breaking.
Still, some believe the supercentenarian was telling the truth and was not an imposter, including French gerontologist Jean-Marie Robine who certified the woman’s age in the 1990s. Robine and his colleagues thoroughly investigated Calment’s background and asked her questions only she could answer, such as the name of her math teacher.
Robine points out that it would have been very difficult to keep such a secret for 80 years, noting, for example, that it is “preposterous” that Fernand Calment, Jeanne’s husband, would start passing off his daughter as his wife and no one would say anything about it.
Yvonne’s death certificate would also have had to be deliberately falsified to make the scheme work. Since neither a doctor nor coroner confirmed her death, it’s possible.
To determine the truth, Nicolas Brouard, the director of research at the French Institute of Demographic Studies, said an exhumation of Jeanne and Yvonne Calment’s bodies is necessary.
If Calment was a fraud, then who lays claim to the title of oldest person in the world? American Sarah Knauss, who died in 1999 at the age of 119.
Americans’ life expectancy has dropped over the last couple of years because of substance abuse and a decrease in emotional wellbeing. An uptick in suicides and diseases such as diabetes have also had an effect on lifespan. Meanwhile, the country with the highest life expectancy is Monaco (89.5 years).
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: Was the World’s Oldest Person A Fraud? New Research Suggests…
Gravity-Defying Sculpture Carved From A Single Tree Trunk
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Canadian artist Maskull Lasserre hand-carved his latest work “Schrödinger’s Wood”—now retitled “Study of Cord Progression”—from the giant trunk of an ash tree. Starting the process on the 13-foot-tall behemoth of a tree trunk with a chainsaw, he eventually whittled his way down to what looks like just a few fibers of rope keeping the tree together.
Once he had removed most of the material he didn’t need, Lasserre worked with smaller electric saws and grinders before finishing his work with small knives and chisels. The delicate carving is displayed suspended by a chain fall above a gallery floor. Its massive weight seems impossibly held up by the carved rope.
Wood-whittling has long been featured in the Ripley’s collection, with Robert Ripley himself purchasing a number of wooden masterpieces. He was thrilled by the amount of skill an artisan could demonstrate with a penknife!
These intricate carvings seem like unsolvable puzzles. In fact, many of the examples in Ripley’s Odditoriums around the world were carved from a single piece of wood, just like Lasserre’s own sculpture.
From conga-dancing dogs and bicycling ballerinas, to hair-raising feats of strength and death-defying motorcycle stunts, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! A Century of Strange! is sure to delight readers of all ages. With over 1,200 weird-but-true stories from around the world and 256 pages of wild and wonderful photography, this year’s collection of all things odd is not-to-be-missed.
Source: Gravity-Defying Sculpture Carved From A Single Tree Trunk
January 2, 2019
You Could Casually Ride An Alligator In The 1900s At This California Alligator Farm
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Would you let your child ride a full-grown 400-pound alligator? Opened in 1907 by “Alligator Joe” Campbell and Francis Earnest, the California Alligator Farm was resident to over 1,000 alligators at the height of its popularity. This was obviously a time before animal rights activists and when “freak-raising farms” were on the rise. Photographs of a different time in our society reveal how the residents were able to enjoy the alligators, even letting their children ride on the farm’s oldest residents.
In 1912, Mervyn L. Conner wrote a detailed description of the experience visiting the Alligator Farm, in an article published in an early 20th Century newspaper San Francisco Call. Conner described that upon entering the farm, you could purchase a wide array of alligator belts, purses, and other trinkets made of the skin of alligators from the farm. The alligators themselves were kept separated according to size, describes Conner. The purpose of this is so the larger alligators wouldn’t eat the smaller ones. Conner continues, saying, “Our guide threw chunks of meat into the alligators so that we could see how they grasped it between their massive jaws and they clenched it tightly between their teeth that it could not be torn away from them.” The writer continues by describing an adult-sized alligator, kept separate from the smaller alligators where the guide seemed a bit “wary.” Concluding the experience, Conner said the day was “pleasantly and profitably spent.”
While it seems shocking to wrap our heads around, you can see by photographs taken of the time that these days amongst the alligators were enjoyed by many residents and visitors of the area. Even fraternities were known to sneak into the farm and get up close and personal with these reptiles. This is obviously in blatant disregard for the signs that requested visitors do not “throw stones at the alligators, spit on, punch or molest them in any way.” Some alligators even performed for the visitors. One performance, for example, included one of the farm’s guides who would lasso an alligator with a rope and prompted the alligator towards a chute the reptile would slide down. Other performances included a hypnotist act.
Unfortunately, the appeal of the Alligator Farm faded and by 1984, it was closed down due to low attendance. Now, we can only envision the potential for disaster if this Alligator Farm still existed today.
By Nicole Pyles, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: You Could Casually Ride An Alligator In The 1900s At This California Alligator Farm
You Could Casually Ride An Alligator In the 1900s At This California Alligator Farm
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Would you let your child ride a full-grown 400-pound alligator? Opened in 1907 by “Alligator Joe” Campbell and Francis Earnest, the California Alligator Farm was resident to over 1,000 alligators at the height of its popularity. This was obviously a time before animal rights activists and when “freak-raising farms” were on the rise. Photographs of a different time in our society reveal how the residents were able to enjoy the alligators, even letting their children ride on the farm’s oldest residents.
In 1912, Mervyn L. Conner wrote a detailed description of the experience visiting the Alligator Farm, in an article published in an early 20th Century newspaper San Francisco Call. Conner described that upon entering the farm, you could purchase a wide array of alligator belts, purses, and other trinkets made of the skin of alligators from the farm. The alligators themselves were kept separated according to size, describes Conner. The purpose of this is so the larger alligators wouldn’t eat the smaller ones. Conner continues, saying, “Our guide threw chunks of meat into the alligators so that we could see how they grasped it between their massive jaws and they clenched it tightly between their teeth that it could not be torn away from them.” The writer continues by describing an adult-sized alligator, kept separate from the smaller alligators where the guide seemed a bit “wary.” Concluding the experience, Conner said the day was “pleasantly and profitably spent.”
While it seems shocking to wrap our heads around, you can see by photographs taken of the time that these days amongst the alligators were enjoyed by many residents and visitors of the area. Even fraternities were known to sneak into the farm and get up close and personal with these reptiles. This is obviously in blatant disregard for the signs that requested visitors do not “throw stones at the alligators, spit on, punch or molest them in any way.” Some alligators even performed for the visitors. One performance, for example, included one of the farm’s guides who would lasso an alligator with a rope and prompted the alligator towards a chute the reptile would slide down. Other performances included a hypnotist act.
Unfortunately, the appeal of the Alligator Farm faded and by 1984, it was closed down due to low attendance. Now, we can only envision the potential for disaster if this Alligator Farm still existed today.
By Nicole Pyles, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: You Could Casually Ride An Alligator In the 1900s At This California Alligator Farm
January 1, 2019
December 31, 2018
Everything You Thought Was a Fruit, Veggie, Berry, or Nut Is Wrong
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
As Valentine’s Day approaches, you may be inclined to shower your sweet with sweets, but if you think your sweetheart deserves something like chocolate-covered strawberries you may be tainting your relationship with lies: Strawberries are not berries.
Believe it or not, everything you know about fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and berries may be wrong.
Skewers of deception.
Fruits vs Vegetables
A fruit is the seed-bearing portion of a plant, while a vegetable is the remainder, like a root, leaf, or stem.
Fruits You Thought Were Vegetables:
Avocado, fruit.
Bell pepper, fruit.
Squash, fruit.
Eggplant, fruit.
Cucumber, fruit.
Pickle, fruit?!
What’s in a Berry?
A berry is a “fleshy fruit that has multiple seeds on the inside.” This leads to some startling realizations. For one, watermelons are berries, and so are chili peppers and bananas.
The headache comes when you examine foods with “berry” in their names. Strawberries are not berries. Those small seeds on the OUTSIDE of their pink and white flesh aren’t even seeds. The pink strawberry is actually just a thickened piece of stem that acts as a receptacle for achenes, which are fruit that never develop and are often mistaken for seeds on the strawberry’s skin.
Far from the only offender of the seeds on the inside rule, neither blackberries nor raspberries are berries either.
Chocolate-covered receptacles, anyone?
Going Nuts
A can of mixed nuts holds just as many lies as the Edible Arrangement you were planning to purchase your Valentine. We separated out all the actual nuts from a can of mixed nuts, ending up with a paltry handful of what the label promised us.
Jimmy Carter’s pride and joy, peanuts, which also boat “nut” in the name, are really legumes, like lentils or peas. Almonds, cashews, and Brazil nuts are all seeds that grow on trees! Only the hazelnuts and pecans were really nuts.
If this whole thing has you going bananas, you might think you’re safe sticking to chocolate this year, but are cocoa beans really beans at all? They’re in fact fruit whose seeds are used to make delicious chocolate.
Source: Everything You Thought Was a Fruit, Veggie, Berry, or Nut Is Wrong
Or Not: Hair and Nails Grow After Death
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Or Not
In today’s world many misconceptions have been perpetuated—becoming modern day “facts”—when, in reality, myths and hearsay have taken over. Sorry to burst your bubble, but in this weekly column, Ripley’s puts those delusions to the test, turning your world upside down, because you can’t always…Believe It!
Today: Post-Mortem Hair and Nail Growth
Follicle Putrefaction
Everyone wonders what happens to them when they die, and while we like to ignore the more gruesome parts of putrefaction, there has long been the rumor that your hair and nails continue to grow after death. Accounts of this urban legend have been going around as far back as 1929 when writer Erich Remarque described the process:
“It strikes me that these nails will continue to grow like lean fantastic cellar-plants long after Kemmerich breathes no more. I see the picture before me. They twist themselves into corkscrews and grow and grow, and with them the hair on the decaying skull, just like grass in a good soil, just like grass, how can it be possible?”—from All Quiet on the Western Front
The Stages Of Death
Once someone dies, their body stops supplying oxygen to the cells in their body. Without oxygen, your body stops producing glucose, which is the “food” cells rely on. This is where some of the pseudo-science for this myth comes from. People know that nails and hair are made of dead tissue and that after death, there’s a surplus of the stuff.
While it is true that your hair and nails are composed of lifeless keratin, the process to make them requires activity from the germinal matrix, which produces the keratin. Without life, the matrix cannot produce any more nail. The same goes for hair, which is also made from non-living keratin and is produced by a living matrix.
The matrix requires blood to produce the keratin.
That said, there is some room for technicality here. After brain activity ceases—and a person is declared dead—it can take several minutes for the rest of the cells in the body to die. Nerve cells die the quickest—in just 7 minutes—but other cellular processes do carry on. If you take the average nail and hair growth of a person in a day, about 0.1 millimeters for nails and 0.5 millimeters for hair, then adjust for old age—hair and nail growth slows with age—you could figure that the hair and nails of a deceased person grow about 3 micrometers. For reference, a single human hair is usually 100 micrometers thick.
The Myth
So if we know hair and nails can’t grow without living structures to produce them, why do people think they do? While your cells die and the decomposition process begins, one of the first thing that starts to happen is dehydration. Without the ability to maintain tissue maintenance, the water evaporates from your body, drying out your skin. As your body dries, it shrinks, all except for that keratin protein that was dry already. So instead of your nails growing out, the skin on your fingers is actually pulling in, leaving more hard nail exposed. The same is true for your hair.
Morticians sometimes have to apply large amounts of moisturizing cream to human bodies to keep this from becoming obvious even just days after death. Men with beards, especially require ample moisture to keep the shrinkage at a minimum. Keeping this in mind, it’s easy to imagine early and isolated communities opening recently dug graves to see shrunken faces with long beards and nails, and think something sinister and supernatural could be afoot!
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