Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 334
July 2, 2018
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June 29, 2018
Ripley’s Relic Escape Adventure Debuts In New York City
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Nicknamed “The Modern Marco Polo,” Robert Ripley acquired hundreds of exotic artifacts from around the world. Did you know that his endless search for unbelievable stories was documented by Mr. Ripley himself, in his popular newspaper cartoon feature? Ripley’s first Believe It or Not! books, collections of his cartoon drawings, appeared in 1929 and 1931, at a time when he was receiving millions of pieces of mail each year!
Believe it or not, Robert Ripley opened seven different “Odditoriums,” typically associated with World Fairs, to house his vast collection.
Ripley’s Relic Debut
There is a new “scientific discovery” waiting to be unearthed and unlocked at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square this summer. Opening at the crossroads of the world on June 28th, a new interactive escape adventure—RIPLEY’S RELIC!
Ripley’s Relic will transform you into explorers! Work together to unlock a series of puzzles and decipher a strange assortment of mysterious symbols. Featuring the latest in high-tech components and movie-quality set design, Ripley’s Relic will challenge adventurers to crack the code and unlock the powers of this new, unexplained object.
You now can be just like Ripley—a cartoonist, explorer, reporter, adventurer, and collector, who traveled to 201 countries in 35 years seeking the odd, the unusual, and the unexplained.
The History of Escape Rooms
Puzzles have had a tremendous effect on our culture. From interactive scavenger hunts and mirror mazes, which you can find throughout our Believe It or Not’s!, to video games and haunted houses, you’ve without a doubt dabbled and unraveled a puzzle.
Our Mirror Maze at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Panama Beach City
Escape rooms began in 2007 with 35-year-old Takao Kato, of the Kyoto publishing company, SCRAP Co. Following the success of the first Real Escape Game, the concept spilled into Singapore in 2011. These games usually consist of numerical sequences and color-coding. More than 50 escape room games were created and inspired Kato to tell his friend Kazuya Iwata to bring it over to the states. Nate Martin, who co-founded Puzzle Break, followed in the footsteps of Kato and became the first American-based company to create an escape room.
Ripley’s Rarities
From animal oddities to exotic wooden cars, and even medieval torture devices, our warehouse is filled with rarities and relics you probably can’t find anywhere! With our show, Ripley’s Rarities, we take you up close and personal with an exclusive look at some of the most fascinating artifacts and treasures collected by Ripley’s Believe it or Not! since the days of Robert Ripley himself.
When Robert Ripley first visited Canton, China, in 1923, he observed people flagrantly carrying their opium pipes wherever they went!
Phrenology measured bumps on people’s heads to determine their mental faculties. Developed in the 1820s, it was the forerunner of psychology.
This vampire killing kit contains everything needed to fight a vampire. It has holy water, a crucifix, serums, and even a gun with silver bullets.
Let us know in the comment below if you’ve got what it takes to find Ripley’s Relic in New York!
Source: Ripley’s Relic Escape Adventure Debuts In New York City
Firefighters Finish Wrecked Driver’s Pizza Delivery
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[June 24-30th, 2018] A World Cup water shortage, a new study on dinosaur tongues, a dog performing CPR, and pizza-delivering firemen.
World Cup Water Surge
The 2018 World Cup has already had world-shaking effects, but the latest disruption has to do with the Japanese water supply. Water authorities were baffled when water surged 24%. Looking for the cause of this mysterious phenomenon, they realized it happened at half-time in the match between Japan and Colombia. Huge numbers of people had apparently been holding out, an ended up all using the bathroom at once.
Police Call Police On Man Calling Police
After a man in Cobb County, Georgia, called the police over 100 times in the past three years, law enforcement called for help. Officers had been sent out each time to just to make sure everything was OK, but the constant requests were proving to be a huge drain on officers’ time. In response, police issued an arrest warrant for the 62-year-old man, putting an end to his requests for milk, finding the TV remote, and many other non-emergency issues.
Police Dog Demonstrates CPR
A police dog in Spain named Poncho demonstrated puppy-performed CPR on his trainer. After seeing an officer go down, he springs into action, running over with a blue flashing light strapped to his harness. He started by hopping on the officer’s chest for compressions and then stopped to listen for a pulse.
“Heroica” actuación de nuestro #Compañerosde4Patas Poncho, que no dudó ni un instante en “salvar la vida” del agente, practicando la #RCP de una manera magistral.
El perro es el único ser en el mundo que te amará más de lo que se ama a sí mismo- John Billings#Adopta pic.twitter.com/yeoEwPkbRc
— Policía de Madrid (@policiademadrid) June 22, 2018
Dinosaurs Couldn’t Stick Out Their Tongues
According to a new study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science and the University of Texas, most dinosaurs couldn’t articulate their tongues like they do in the movies. After studying bone structures in the mouth and throat, they concluded that the tongues of large carnivorous dinosaurs pretty much just stuck to the bottom of their mouths, much like an alligator’s tongue.
Firefighters Finish Driver’s Pizza Delivery
When firefighters showed up to a car crash in Henrietta, New York, one of the drivers—a pizza delivery man—was injured. After rendering care and safely loading him into an ambulance, they noticed his cargo was intact. Sworn to serve, the team delivered the pizza to a surprised man clad in pajamas.
Not For Skeptics, The Florida Town Full Of Mediums And Spirits: Cassadaga
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Stepping into the quiet town of Cassadaga, FL feels both peaceful and alarming. Amidst the unusual architecture and ominous Spanish moss dangling from the treetops, it feels like a trip back in time. Even stranger, the residents of Cassadaga can communicate with the dearly departed.
Camp Cassadaga, as it was once known, is populated by mediums. They claim to use different senses, or “clairs,” to communicate with spirits. The mediums use hearing (clairaudience), seeing (clairvoyance), knowing (claircognizance) and feeling (clairsentience) to channel messages from spirits—bridging the spiritual and physical world.
Est. 1894
The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp comes from very mysterious beginnings. In the late 1800s 27-year-old medium George P. Colby was instructed by his spirit guide, a Native American named Seneca, to bring Spiritualism to Florida. Seneca instructed Colby to search for an area with “rolling hills and linked lakes,” which he did in what is now known as Cassadaga.
However, spiritualism has its roots further up North…
Sisters of Spiritualism
Believe It or Not, the science, philosophy and religion of spiritualism can be accredited to three young girls—Leah, Maggie and Kate Fox.
Sisters Leah, Maggie and Kate Fox of Hydesville, New York.
In 1848, in the bedroom of their Hydesville, New York home, these sisters allegedly communicated with spirits through sequences of raps and taps. Quickly becoming a national sensation, the Fox sisters went on tour, drawing large crowds of both believers and skeptics who never found any evidence of trickery.
Summoning Spirits
In the 1920s, magicians, including Harry Houdini, began to prove they could replicate what mediums were doing. Despite his disbelief, after the death of his mother, Houdini sought the help of a medium.
Are humans extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion or can we truly communicate with the dead? Historically, skeptics have tried to debunk séances by binding mediums with ropes, gagging them and even sealing them in “spirit cabinets,” to see if phenomena would occur despite restraint. Many believe these events can be explained by manipulation, but in Cassadaga they are a truly spiritual experience. It is said that many forms of phenomena occur during his séances at Cassadaga’s Colby Memorial Temple, including “apports”—objects appearing to materialize and fall from the ceiling!
One form of séance is table tipping, in which a group of people sit under dim lighting with their hands gently placed on a table. Once there is communication with spirit, the table will begin to move—in some cases rock, in others slide across a room. In Cassadaga, this is even done in broad daylight outside of Colby Memorial Temple!
Source: Not For Skeptics, The Florida Town Full Of Mediums And Spirits: Cassadaga
June 28, 2018
The Mysterious, Intrepid Aloha Wanderwell
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Aloha Wanderwell loved record breaking. In the 1920s, she traveled 380,000 miles across 80 countries becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a Ford Model T. Just 16 years old at the time, the epic journey took seven years to complete. A female Indiana Jones, she was the first woman to fly Brazil’s Mato Grosso and document the Bororo people of Brazil.
But the Canadian-American explorer’s life swirled with scandal and mystery. Her husband’s murder aboard a yacht remains one of the greatest cold cases in US history. Aloha earned the nickname “the Rhinestone Widow” because of her emotionless demeanor. Read on to learn more about this figure of controversy, self-invention, and legend.
Answering the Call to Adventure
Aloha was born Idris Galcia Welsh on October 13, 1906. She grew up on a steady diet of adventure tales by W.H.G. Kingston, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more. Her stepfather died in combat at Ypres in 1917. Aloha and her sister were sent to a strict French convent school. Meanwhile, her mother visited the front searching in vain for her husband’s body. In the convent, Aloha chafed against its self-denying rigors. She longed to run away, to explore the world she’d read so much about.
By 1921, “Captain” Walter Wanderwell (né Valerian Johannes Pieczynski) made adventure his calling. Competing in the Million Dollar Wager—a global endurance car race—Walter determined to win by visiting the most countries of any team. Known affectionately as “Cap” by his friends, Walter was a controversial figure. He served time in US federal prison during World War I as a suspected German spy. But that didn’t stop the media from falling in love with his life of wanderlust.
By 1922, Walter needed a French translator, driver, and secretary for his Million Dollar Wager. He placed a newspaper announcement advertising for, “Brains, Beauty & Breeches—World Tour Offer for Lucky Young Woman…. Wanted to join an expedition… Asia, Africa…” Aloha answered the call, charming her way into Walter’s party.
Courtesy The Richard Diamond Trust© 2018
Driving Around the World
Walter rechristened Idris, Aloha Wanderwell, and she became the star of his expedition. Each endurance team funded their trip through public speaking, the sale of souvenir pamphlets, and screenings of films they made en route. Ironically, the Wanderwell Expedition’s main competition came from a team led by Walter’s ex-wife, a Broadway chorus girl named Nell. Talk about awkward!
Courtesy The Richard Diamond Trust© 2018
Besides acting as translator, secretary, and driver, Aloha took on the duties of actress, photographer, cinematographer, salesperson, vaudeville performer, film editor, interpreter, negotiator, and even mechanic. Over the course of seven years, the public grew weary of the Million Dollar Wager, but Aloha kept the adventuring spirit alive with her charisma and good looks.
The expedition proved grueling. Aloha used crushed bananas to grease the differential, elephant fat as engine oil, and kerosene as gasoline. The Wanderwell Team “won” the competition as a result of Aloha’s moxy and marketing. She later chronicled—and exaggerated—the exploits of the Wanderwell expedition in her book Call to Adventure (1939).
Breaking Records in Brazil
During the Wanderwell Expedition, Aloha and Walter fell in love. They married on the American leg of their journey. In 1929, they released the silent film With Car and Camera Around the World making them international exploring sensations. Aloha gave lectures describing their harrowing journeys along to screenings of the movie. They had two children together, Nile and Valri.
But marriage and motherhood didn’t slow Aloha down. Between 1930 and 1931, Aloha and Walter piloted a German seaplane to the uncharted Mato Grosso in Brazil. Setting up camp in Descalvados Ranch in Cuibá, their goal was finding the missing explorer Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett’s Lost City of Z—aka the legendary city of Eldorado.
But when their plane ran out of fuel on the Paraguay River, the pair had to split up. Walter trekked out of the Amazonian Basin in search of help. Aloha stayed behind with the Bororo tribe. Through ingenuity and charm, she earned their trust and created films documenting their daily life. Unbeknownst to her, these reels constituted the first film footage ever taken of the tribe. After her rescue and return to the United States, Aloha edited and released the 32-minute silent film Flight to the Stone Age Bororos.
Courtesy The Richard Diamond Trust© 2018
The Murder of Captain Wanderwell
The Wanderwells’ journey together came to an end in late 1932. On December 5, the day before another departure to South America, Walter was shot in the back by an unknown assailant. The murder occurred aboard his 110-foot yacht, the Carma, anchored in a harbor near Long Beach, California. Two suspects were named by police, William James Guy and Edward Eugene Fernando Montague, the Duke of Manchester’s son. Guy would later be charged with murder.
Guy, a member of the Wanderwells’ 1931 expedition to South America, despised Walter for swindling him out of money and ruining his marriage. Guy’s trial caused a media frenzy. Yet, a jury eventually acquitted him.
Many speculated Guy’s good looks and easygoing charm swayed the jury. Truth be told, Walter’s womanizing ways and shady money dealings had earned him quite the reputation as a scam artist. The line of those who wished to murder him was long. But did it include Aloha?
While never named as a suspect by police, Aloha’s strange behavior following her husband’s death left a pall on her character. Detached and unsurprised by the news, police wondered if she’d had foreknowledge of the murder plot. Her emotionless demeanor made her “the Rhinestone Widow.” In 1933, her rushed marriage to Walter Baker, one of Walter Wanderwell’s former cameramen, further tarnished the public image she had so carefully crafted during the 1920s.
The Legacy of Aloha Wanderwell
Aloha continued to travel and document her journeys with the help of her second Walter. But the notoriety associated with her first husband’s unsolved murder stayed with her for the rest of her life. Known as “the world’s most traveled girl,” Aloha carefully preserved her journals, photos, films, and artifacts of her journey for the rest of her life. She passed away on June 4, 1996, in Newport Beach, California.
A Penny Falling From A Skyscraper Won’t Kill You
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: Can a dropped penny kill?.
Penny Drop
There are some people who can’t fight the urge to hurl a penny off a huge edifice, such as the Empire State Building, just to see what happens. Coins tossed from the New York City landmark settle on the pavement, on a vehicle, or possibly on an unsuspecting person 102 floors below. Is the velocity enough to kill someone?
The myth is that when a penny is subjected to the force of gravity it will speed up as it falls, wounding any living thing in its path. The truth is, a falling penny won’t kill you, but a falling ballpoint pen could put you in the hospital.
The Reality
It’s difficult to imagine a penny as a lethal weapon (although it can be dangerous if swallowed by a small child). If a tourist decides to throw a penny from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, it’s unlikely it will do much damage to whatever it strikes below. Because of its size and shape, the air cushions the coin, preventing it from becoming a deadly weapon.
Pennies are round and flat. When dropped from a tall building, they have as much power as falling leaves, according to Louis Bloomfield, a physicist at the University of Virginia, as reported by Scientific American. A “victim” of such a penny attack would only feel a tiny bit of pressure on his or her body.
Bloomfield experimented with wind tunnels and helium balloons to simulate a penny falling from a skyscraper. He was hit by a few of the coins and was unharmed. The only way a penny would accelerate to such a point that it would cause damage is if it was dropped from a tall building encapsulated in a vacuum in which all the air has been removed.
In real life, a falling penny collides with air particles, which prevents the coin from accelerating. This resistance, or drag force, keeps the penny from rapidly moving downwards, which thwarts the force of gravity.
As the penny speeds up, it encounters more air resistance. The drag force and downward gravitational force balance each other, preventing the coin from accelerating. As a result, the penny drops at a constant speed (terminal velocity) to the ground.
Pennies weigh just 2.5 grams (0.088 ounces) so not much drag is needed to slow them down. Their flat shape makes them particularly susceptible to air resistance. When thrown off a skyscraper, they will reach terminal velocity at about 50 feet down, according to Bloomfield. Then they will fall to the ground at about 25 mph (40 kph). In a vacuum, a penny thrown from a skyscraper would reach a speed of 208 mph (335 kph). This could certainly hurt someone, but it wouldn’t be strong enough to pierce his or her skull.
Death By Ballpoint
However, if a person decided to chuck a ballpoint pen from the top of the Empire State Building, then there could be some damage. Depending on its design and the way it falls, a pen could spin, flutter, or act as a torpedo, traveling up to 200 mph. A falling ballpoint pen could definitely chip a sidewalk and cause a head injury.
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com
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