Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 373
December 7, 2017
THICKEST SKULL X-RAYED? Meet the Hammerhead!
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
John Ferraro is the Hammerhead. His skull is more than two times thicker than the average human’s, and he uses it to hammer nails into wood, snap baseball bats in half, and bend steel bars!
John shocks scientists and amazes audiences with his ability to withstand incredible amounts of force to his head, with apparently no negative side effects. The average human skull is 7 mm thick, but an MRI scan revealed that John’s is 16 mm! This biological advantage allows him to achieve feats like repeatedly head-butting nails into wooden planks encased in metal, with nothing but a thin piece of cloth between his forehead and the nail head.
“As far I know, I am unique and the only one that has double-thick bone density and strength. Although my daughters sometimes are very hardheaded in different ways!”
The most dangerous stunt he performs is getting slammed by a jackhammer as it breaks a cinderblock on his head (check it out in the video!). Not only does he feel the continuous impact of the hammer, but the blade comes within a fraction of an inch from John’s precious skull!
Believe it or not, John has not suffered any ill effects like concussions, injuries, or broken bones over the years, which has amazed doctors, neurologists, and brain trauma experts. He has even had his brain scanned and looked at by various brain trauma studies, and they found it in perfect condition!
“My motto has always been “It’s mind over matter—if you’re out of your mind, it doesn’t matter!”
December 6, 2017
The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombings
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Naval engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was working in the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. While the war raged in the Pacific, he had managed to keep busy designing ships and oil tankers for the country. Just as he finished a three-month project, and was preparing to head home to see his wife and daughter, he noticed a plane flying overhead. Something fell from the plane. Slowed by a parachute, it was an atomic bomb.
Yamaguchi jumped into a nearby ditch as the bomb exploded in the sky. The aircraft that dropped the device, the Enola Gay, had targeted the city just two miles from where Yamaguchi took cover. The blast sent him spinning through the air, and he landed in a nearby potato patch. When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see anything—the world was completely black.
The blast hadn’t blinded him, but instead blotted out the sun with an enormous cloud of dust. Yamaguchi’s arms and face were badly burned and his eardrums were ruptured. As the debris cleared, he saw a towering mushroom cloud over the city.
Getting Home
The blast had immediately killed some 80,000 people, but after running into some fellow survivors in the Mitsubishi shipyard, Yamaguchi made his way to an air raid shelter. In the morning, he heard that the train station had somehow survived and that people were making a mad dash for it, hoping to escape the city.
Still injured, he made his way through a city of crumbling buildings, fires, and bodies melted to the streets. At one point, he had to swim across a river filled with burned corpses. Yamaguchi eventually made it to the train and settled in for the night as it took him to his hometown of Nagasaki.
Countdown
When Yamaguchi arrived home, his wife and daughter didn’t even recognize the burned man standing in front of them. His wife knew her husband had been in Hiroshima, and thought his bandaged figure might even be a ghost. After finally receiving medical attention, he collapsed in bed for the night.
The next morning, Yamaguchi reported for work like any other day, but his superiors sat him down to debrief him on the events in Hiroshima. He explained what he saw, but his bosses didn’t believe him. They thought there was no way a single bomb could cause so much destruction.
It was during this meeting that the sky once again lit up with fire. The building was destroyed and his bandages were blown away, but—once again—he survived. Worried for his family, Yamaguchi rushed home. Thankfully they were just as lucky.
Aftermath
Though Yamaguchi is the only officially recognized double-survivor of atomic bombings, as many as 165 people experienced both atomic weapons firsthand. Despite becoming sick with radiation poisoning, Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived until 2010, eventually becoming a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament.
December 5, 2017
25,000 Pounds of Rattlesnakes Caught in Texas
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Over 12.5 tons of snakes were caught for a rattlesnake festival in Sweetwater, Texas! The Sweetwater rattlesnake roundup is said to be the largest one in the world. Every year, about 25,000 people gather to watch and participate in the capturing and beheading of thousands of diamondback rattlesnakes. No part of the snake goes unused—the skin is turned into leather, the meat is fried up to be eaten, and the venom is collected for research purposes. The live rattlesnakes are kept in a giant pit, where they must be “stirred” to keep them from suffocating.
CC Kimberly Vardeman
Fried Rattlesnake/CC Kimberly Vardeman
Though state regulators typically bring the biggest haul of snakes of the festival, a team led by snake wrangler Andy Lee managed to bring in over 2,000 pounds of snakes all by themselves. The longest snake captured measured 60 inches, which doesn’t come close to the festival record of 81 inches.
This year marked the 59th year of the Rattlesnake Roundup. Every year they also crown a Miss Snake Charmer who isn’t afraid to get up close and personal with these ravenous rattlers! Part of the judging criteria even involves the girls skinning their own rattlesnake.
Miss Snake Charmer 2010/CC Kimberly Vardeman
Sssssensing You Want More?
Filled with remarkable photos and over 1,500 all new—all true—stories to immerse yourself in, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Shatter Your Senses! is the newest book in the bestselling series from Ripley Publishing—so incredible you won’t believe your eyes…or ears…or nose!
Spark your senses here, on the blog, weekly for a feature from the 2018 annual, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Shatter Your Senses! and follow us on social media for a chance to win a copy, among other unbelievable prizes!
December 4, 2017
The Exclusive Club Obsessed with Exotic Food
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Hosting venerated guests for their willingness and courage to conquer the unknown, New York’s Explorers Club hosts an annual dinner which always serves up a surprise.
Stepping into its Victorian-inspired headquarters is like stepping back in time. With tables made from famous exploration vessels and rare artifacts adorning its walls, you’d think Robert Ripley himself or Alan Quartermaine might be sitting in one of the over-stuffed armchairs reading a book, or regaling an encounter with a Siberian white tiger.
CC Christopher Michel
The Explorers Club has existed for over 100 years, and has included people like Jacques Piccard, Neil Armstrong, Theodore Roosevelt, and the team who first climbed Everest—Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
The Explorers Club Dinner is meant to honor that year’s achievements in exploration, but the menu is normally just as exciting.
Explorers Club Dinner
Exotic food connoisseurs and scientists alike consider the food with great interest. The dinners and cocktail hours have served goat testicles on a stick, sautéed python, and all manner of insects on a stick—including tarantulas and hissing cockroaches.
Credit Craig Chesek via Explorers Club
The presentation of these delicacies is equally as striking. Alligators have been served whole, with their skin flayed everywhere except their faces and claws, with a savory mix of sauce and herbs pasted to their exposed muscles.
Roasted ostrich, rotisserie muskrat, lionfish, scorpion-topped cupcakes, larvae-dipped strawberries, and vomit-scented durians aren’t even considered center-piece fishes at this exploration of the palate.
Eating Mammoth
The dinner that supposedly started it all was the flesh of a preserved wooly mammoth. The dish was served in 1930 after a group of explorers in Siberia were able to secure the mammoth meat in the icy tundra.
Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
There appears to be little evidence, however, that the club dined on wooly mammoth. According to records, the meat they ate was labeled Megatherium by the club itself.
Megatherium would refer to an ancient ground sloth, not a mammoth. Furthermore, some of the leftovers from the dinner made their way to Yale University, where researchers have since identified the meat as contemporary green sea turtle.
Culinary Costs
You might think that eating testicles and eyeballs would be cheap since few people want to eat them, but there are a few good reasons tickets to the dinner start at $300.
We found out for ourselves how much canned tarantulas cost in our Ripley’s Guide to Non-Perishables, but according to the club, fresh ones start at $100. Scorpions cost slightly less at just $30. Whole alligators cost nearly $13 per pound, making them over four times the price of a cow.
To fully prepare a tarantula for service requires a few steps to perfect. First, the spider is chilled to make it more sluggish, then it is splashed with brandy to soften its hair—and get it a bit tipsy—then it’s flash broiled to remove the hairs, then battered and fried in the breading of your choice.
Credit Craig Chesek via Explorers Club
December 3, 2017
December 2, 2017
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