Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 328
August 1, 2018
This Visually Impaired Artist Paints By Touch
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley’s Odditoriums are filled with the odd, unusual, and interesting. We’ve got shrunken heads, Marilyn Monroe’s dress, bibles that have been to the moon, along with an expansive collection of art.
Tapping into a bottomless well of potential in the artists we encounter all over the world, we’ve collected dresses made out of candy, sculptures made out of car parts, landscapes painted with sunlight, and anything else creators from around the globe can think of.
We are constantly looking for submissions or artists that can express the odd and unbelievable. If someone wants to build the Millennium Falcon out of matchsticks or render an angel on burnt toast, we want to see it and we want to put it on display for the rest of the world to enjoy.
One of the many talented artists featured in our recent Odd is Art book is Jeff Hanson of Overland Park, Kansas. While the skill, care, and love he endows his paintings with are apparent, it was his story that piqued our interest.
Touch The Art
Hanson has been visually impaired since childhood. Suffering from neurofibromatosis and an optic chiasm tumor, it’s the texture of his art that makes it truly unique. He has a severe vision impairment making him legally blind. At the age of 12, he found himself sitting with ample free time while undergoing rigorous chemotherapy sessions. To pass the time he began painting with watercolors on notecards.
His mother couldn’t stand throwing his drawings away, so she began using them as “thank you” cards at the hospital. Interest in his art quickly emerged. Hanson has since gone into overdrive, producing various paintings and selling them for as much as $20,000 to celebrities like Warren Buffet and Elton John.
Hanson has a difficult time seeing his canvas and colors, at times is barely capable of telling the shades apart. To help himself, he’s made the works incredibly textured. He typical slathers a painting with a rubbery substance before painting, then fills in the crevasses and valleys with different colors. When he wants to mix it up, he’ll pull strips of rope or canvas through his paintings before coloring and carefully arranging them.
Despite his physical challenges, Hanson doesn’t just subsist on his art, but actively works to raise as much money as he can for nonprofit organizations. To date, he’s generated more than $3 million with his art, and plans to raise $10 million by the time he’s 30.
“Every act of kindness helps create kinder communities, more compassionate nations and abetter world for all… even one painting at a time.”—Jeff Hanson
Your Art
Want to get your hands dirty? Flex your own artistic muscles and enter Deviant Art’s Unconventional Art Contest. You can win a trip for two to Orlando to join the Ripley Art team for a day—not to mention a slew of other exclusive prizes like a trip to LA and a chance for your work to be featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
It’s easy: create some Odd Art inspired by our book, Odd Is Art. Using a mix of materials is encouraged. Ripley artists have used everything from duct tape to gunpowder—and stories like Jeff’s are also unbelievable! Just embrace the odd and create!
Ripley’s and Deviant Art’s Unconventional Art contest is open now through August 20th. Check out the official rules, prizing, and most importantly, inspiration.
America’s Secret Unmanned Space Plane That Only The Air Force Has Answers To
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Just outside Earth’s atmosphere, covertly conducting military experiments, a secret plane slices through the inky vacuum of space. The craft is known as the X-37B. Only the United States Air Force knows where it is, what it’s doing, or when it will return to Earth.
Military space plane projects date back to the 1950s. The United States Air Force has long been the de facto space force for the United States, and their efforts began with a project called the X-20 Dyna-Soar.
The X-20’s designs made room for just one pilot, but after six years of work, the project was eventually scrapped as work fell behind and costs soared. Despite its early failure, research on the X-20 would eventually prove pivotal in designing the space shuttles.
Years passed, and the militarization of space went through several phases. The United States hatched plans for boots on the ground combat on the Moon and the Soviets tested a cannon on a supposedly civilian space station. Spy satellites eventually won out as the prime directive for military space projects, but in 2010, the Air Force’s first successful space plane took flight.
X-37B
Built by Boeing, the X-37B is a reusable spacecraft designed to be flown as an unmanned drone, conducting missions for the military. Based largely on the design of the space shuttle, the craft is agile and fast. Though no official mission parameters have been declassified for the program, many observers have suggested it is able to act as an improvised spy satellite, catch up to and repair or sabotage satellites, and conduct long-term tests and experiments for the military.
Just under 30 feet long, the craft has a storage capacity about the size of a pickup truck bed. It was originally planned to be launched from a glider, but all mission launches have been atop conventional rockets. The smallest and lightest orbital vehicle known publicly, some space experts have declared it the most successful space vehicle in history. The X-37B can operate while traveling Mach 25 and has never suffered a catastrophic incident in its years of service.
Able to launch, operate, and land while totally unmanned, the craft has set numerous records. Though it was designed to only spend 270 days in space, successive missions have put it in orbit for up to 717 days. Though it spends much of its time hiding in space, its launches and landings are inherently public events.
When the X-37B landed at Kennedy Space Center in 2017, most employees at the facility had been given little to no warning that a landing would be taking place, and even fewer knew it would be the military’s secret space plane. The launches are even harder to hide from the public and other nations. Many people tried to piece together its launch trajectory after it took off just two months later, but the craft quickly and quietly eluded at least amateur trackers.
Source: America’s Secret Unmanned Space Plane That Only The Air Force Has Answers To
July 31, 2018
The Death Mask Of Jeremy Bentham
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Before photography, paintings were one of the few ways to preserve what people looked like, but commissioned portraits took a lot of time and were costly. A cheaper and faster alternative was to make a mold of a person’s face.
Death masks were often cast directly off the face of a fresh corpse, providing an almost perfect recreation of their features. Early Egyptian sarcophagi headdresses are some of the earliest known death masks, with King Tutankhamun’s being perhaps the most famous death mask in history. By the Age of Enlightenment, plaster death masks had come back into style, owing their popularity to the Greeks and Romans.
Of the many philosophers and academics who had their faces immortalized after death, Jeremy Bentham was one of them. It was typical for these masks to be taken straight off of fresh corpses, but Bentham may have been an exception. University College London researchers aren’t completely sure whether the mask was taken before Bentham’s death or not. Though they found a reference to a local anatomy school making a mask for a “JB” about a decade before the philosopher’s death, the process would have been unusual and highly uncomfortable—at least for the living.
Bentham was a man ahead of his time in many ways. He wanted prison reform, animal rights, and universal suffrage. He passed away in 1832, leaving behind very specific instructions of what to do with his remains. His master plan was to have his head mummified and displayed atop his skeleton, which he wanted to be clad in a black suit. His dream was to forever look over University College London.
Unfortunately, the preservation process on his head didn’t quite go as planned. His skin shriveled and yellowed, leaving him with a complexion akin to jerky—far rougher than the plaster mask. Sitting him in a school corridor in 1850, officials weren’t sure what to do with his ghastly remains. Eventually, they commissioned a wax sculpture of his head—using the mask as a referenced—and placed the genuine article between the figure’s feet.
Presently, Bentham presides over university council meetings, noted as present but not voting—though he does get a say if the vote is split, providing a tie-breaking “yes” vote.
Unfortunately, Bentham’s head has been stolen numerous times. One group sent a ransom note demanding £100, but the school countered with just £10, and the students caved. The worst prank involved a group of students ransacking the head and using it as a soccer ball.
Source: The Death Mask Of Jeremy Bentham
July 30, 2018
Who Was The Mysterious Leatherman?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
The mysterious Leatherman became a celebrity of sorts in nineteenth-century America. He walked a 365-mile route between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, year after year, and his route was so regular that people could set their watches by him!
The Leatherman’s Impossible Route
This incredible story begins around the time of the American Civil War. It was a time when many were desperate for work, not to mention simply a hot meal and a place to sleep for the night. One such man became a local legend. Nobody ever discovered where he came from or who he was, but in the Eastern Connecticut, Westchester, and Putnam County areas, he’ll be forever known as the Leatherman. The closer they got to him, the more mysterious he became.
Roaming vagabonds were nothing new at all in the 1800s, but this curious character became a local mainstay. The people knew almost nothing about him, other than the fact that he would regularly walk a long, winding route, over the course of about 34 days. His circuit along the Connecticut River would pass through Westchester and Putnam counties, and such towns as South Salem, Croton Falls, Yorktown and Shrub Oak. Every step of the way, he’d be wearing his distinctive leather suit, which weighed over 60 pounds!
Whatever his motivations were, he sure drew attention to himself. As he became a fixture in each of the towns he passed through, thanks to his distinctive appearance, the townspeople began to notice that his punctuality was remarkable. More than that, it was impossible. It was said that you could tell the time by his schedule. If a friendly local had arranged to prepare food for the Leatherman and hand it over at a certain time, he’d be there at your door at that time, wherever you lived on his route.
The Leather-clad Legend
This quirky character in his distinctive leather suit is a fascinating case study. The deeper you look into his story, the more intriguing it all becomes. There was just something about him, some inexplicable charisma that made him a local celebrity. It was considered a great honor for him to stop at your door for food. Indeed, schools would offer their hardest-working students the chance to take supplies out to him on a ‘Leatherman Day!’
Along his route, he slept in a series of caves and cobbled-together structures, where we would store food and such. These came to be known as ‘Leatherman caves,’ and they’re still points of interest in the area today. The question is, just why was this enigmatic man so beloved? Why, when the state of Connecticut passed a ‘Tramp Law’ in 1879, which permitted the arrest and imprisonment of hobos, did he seem to be exempted? Police reportedly took him in only once, in concern for his health.
A Leatherman cave site.
It was nothing to do with his sparkling conversation, that’s for sure. The Leatherman was notoriously tight-lipped, usually speaking only in grunts, mutters and a few words of what seemed to be broken English. It was said that the occasional phrase in French could be discerned, though, leading people to believe that French was his native language.
Indeed, he came to be known by the name Jules Bourglay, which was even written on his headstone. As with some many other things concerning the Leatherman, though, this just was just a theory, a mistaken belief that was disproven.
Jules Bourglay, according to one story, came from Lyon in France. He was, local legend would have it, a leatherworker, who lost his money in this failing trade. He fell in love with the leather merchant’s daughter, lost her too, and came to America in despair. From then on, he roamed in solitude, ‘clothed in the substance of his ruin.’ This fanciful fairytale was later proven to be false, but it continues to be told to this day.
Whoever this enigmatic character really was, he was just as inscrutable in death. He was found dead in one of his regular shelters in New York, in March 1889. Again, nobody can quite agree on the circumstances of his death. Some accounts attribute it to a mysterious head injury, others to cancer brought on by his extensive use of tobacco. Whatever the case, he was given a proper burial, as befits his status as a local ‘celebrity.’ And if you thought the Leatherman was an impossible mystery in life, his death only brought more unbelievable questions! Today we’re left with two seemingly unanswerable questions: not only who was he, but where is he?
A Mystery In Death As In Life
He was buried in Sparta Cemetery in Ossining, New York. In 1953, local historians added the headstone that falsely identified him as ‘Jules Bourglay of Lyons, France.’ In 2011, his grave was exhumed, in an attempt to move his remains to a more central location in the cemetery. Oddly, workers found no trace of a body at the site, only some large nails which were believed to be coffin nails!
Whatever scraps of this mysterious man’s life that could be gathered were re-buried elsewhere in the cemetery, with a new headstone that simply reads ‘The Leatherman.’ In this end, this nickname is all anybody was ever able to confirm about him. At the time of his death, he was found to have a prayer book written in French on his person, and the French-style footwear he always wore hinted at his possible origins. Beyond that, we’re still completely in the dark, over a century after his death.
He wasn’t Jules Bourglay, but we’re now unlikely to ever discover who he was. That’s the crux of his legend, and the reason he’s still spoken of so reverently by the locals of the towns he once frequented.
The Leatherman’s new grave site.
By Chris Littlechild, contributor for Ripleys.com
July 29, 2018
July 28, 2018
July 27, 2018
The Rock Cats Will Make You An Instant Groupie
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Cool Stuff Strange Things
Hosted by Ripley’s lead researcher, Sabrina Sieck, let Ripley’s Believe It or Not! introduce YOU to the coolest stuff and strangest things.
Today: Rock Cats
The Rock Cats
This week on Cool Stuff Strange Things, we clawed our way backstage and were total groupies for, the one, the only, ROCK CATS. Yes, a touring band of cats…and a rogue chicken named Cluck Norris.
Samantha Martin is the Chief Executive Human and Trainer for the Acrocats and the Rock Cats. She was a student of the I.Q. Zoo and even went to chicken training school where she honed her operant conditioning skills to train all sorts of animals. It’s a tough job, literally herding cats.
“They call the shots for everything.” -Samantha Martin, Chief Executive Human and Trainer
Getting the Band Together
The band had humble beginnings, Samantha started out with just a cat that could play the piano, but quickly added drums and a guitar. In these early days, the Rock Cats were exclusively acoustic.
The band needed a cymbal player, but Samantha found that kitty paws aren’t quite suited for it. That’s when she decided to introduce the band’s only non-cat member, Cluck Norris. Samantha describes the chicken as the band’s savior. Chickens are far more reliable than the cats. Where a cat may be less in the mood to play if it had a bad day, chickens are not that emotional.
After that came the cowbell and woodblocks, followed by chimes. The newest addition is Buggles on trumpet.
Special thanks to Samantha Martin and the Acrocats team! You can find them in Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Crazy Pets and Cute Animals or on tour across the country.
Share & Subscribe
If you liked the show, please share it with your peeps. Remember to SUBSCRIBE to our channel to stay BION-informed!
Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog
- Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s profile
- 52 followers
