Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 416
April 19, 2017
The Competitive Life of Pizza Acrobats
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Practicing the art of synchronized pizza dancing, pizza acrobats compete worldwide for the title of Pizza Champion.
These juggling chefs spin and toss raw pizza dough with dexterity and precision, but practice enormous self-control to keep the dough from ripping.
“It’s kind of like what a Harlem Globetrotter does with a basketball.” -Tony Gemignani, 12-time World Pizza Champion
At the yearly Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, these acrobats have their chance to stand before the bastions of international pizza and show off their stuff in the World Pizza Games.
A panel of judges carefully watches and scores competitors, taking into account a variety of factors.
Score Factors:
Creativity
Dexterity
Difficulty
Drops
Transitions
Sets are performed to music tracks, and competitors do anything to gain an edge, including costumes and blindfolds.
Pizza acrobats don’t just toss dough, but also choreograph their dances to invoke the emotions and feelings of pizza.
Serious pizza acrobats have even started using ProDough®, a silicon-based pizza dough substitute that simulates real dough’s elasticity and texture and glows in the dark.
Unlike normal pizza dough, ProDough advertises it will withstand years of constant use.
April 18, 2017
April 17, 2017
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! comes to Amazon Alexa
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is excited to launch “Ripley’s Weird Minute” Flash Briefing on Amazon Alexa.
What is Alexa?
Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Tap is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice and uses Alexa. Ask Alexa to play music, hear the news, check weather, control your smart home, and hear Ripley’s Weird Minute.
To listen, visit Alexa Skills and enable Ripley’s Believe It or Not! “Ripley’s Weird Minute“. After you have enabled the skill, just say “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing?” or “Alexa, what’s in the news?”, and just like that, you have added 60 seconds of fun facts to your day!
What will I hear from Ripley’s Weird Minute?
For over 98 years, Ripley’s has been bringing you the strangest stories from around the globe, and now with “Ripley’s Weird Minute“, we will be pushing fresh content six days a week, bring the bizarre to your news with extraordinary stories.
Preview “Ripley’s Weird Minute” below, or enable “Ripley’s Weird Minute” on your Alexa device to get your daily 60 seconds of oddities.
April 16, 2017
3 Strange Traveling Salesman Kits
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Bygone is the era of traveling salesmen peddling the “finest” goods door-to-door in sprawling suburban neighborhoods. Nowadays, even major retailers are stumbling in the face of burgeoning online sales. In tribute to the death of the salesman, we’ve compiled a list of the strangest kits that Studebaker driving salesmen brought to people’s doors.
Traveling Dentist’s Set
All made in the USA
BETTER THAN VENEERS
Tooth kits were used by traveling dentists. They would carry hundreds of these teeth so that they could match the teeth already in your mouth. These weren’t really teeth, though—a salesman doesn’t want you to buy used teeth—they were made of ceramic.
The dentist that goes to you
Most people however liked their dentist coming to their door even less than they liked going to the dentist themselves. Some 18th century dentists were known to pull teeth without even getting off their horse.
Wilbert Individual Mausoleum from @wunderkamercast
Miniature Coffins
WHERE WOULD THEY GET THEIR LEADS?
In the early 1900s you could have a sarcophagus salesman knocking at your door. These salesmen would carry miniature versions of coffins less than 6-inches tall.
“What can I do to get you in a coffin today?”
The Briefcase Grave
Another tool of the trade featured mock funeral plots inside of briefcases, so that salesmen could show you what you looked like 6-feet below and above!
Optician’s Kit
F. Davidson & Co. Optician’s Kit
From the 1902 Sears, Roebuck catalogue
NOT A MONOCLE COLLECTION
This collection of single, round lenses was used by traveling opticians to diagnose your eye prescription in-home. Accompanying the lenses was a set of interchangeable lens frames, so that the door-to-door optician could provide a full experience of what it was like to see clearly.
Become an Optician at Sears University
The kits were also dubiously known as “trial kits” as the entire prescriptive process was simple trial and error.There weren’t any qualifications to sell glasses; all you had to do was buy your kit for as little as $27.85.
Never Miss a Unbelievable Story!
Newsletter Subscription (Sidebar)
Sign up for our Newsletter and get weird news and exclusive offers to Ripley's, delivered straight to your inbox!
Name
*
April 15, 2017
April 14, 2017
Atta Boy, the Lost Holy Grail of the Ripley’s Collection
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
I’m Edward Meyer, VP of Archive & Exhibits for Ripley’s Believe It or Not! I manage the purchase of new exhibits going into our
Collectors and archivists are always looking for the one that got away, whether it was them that “lost it”, or someone else. One of my “Holy Grail’ desires, is to find “Atta Boy”—an item Ripley had in his possession in 1933, but seemingly let get away.
“Atta Boy” is known to me in 5 formats, an original Ripley cartoon drawing from March 8, 1931, a dust cover from Ripley’s second book in 1931, and three photos believed to have been taken at the first Ripley Odditorium in Chicago in 1933.
The cartoon calls him a mummified 6.5-inch baby from Bolivia; the photos are labeled in Ripley’s handwriting, a shrunken human body from the Jivaro Indians of Peru.
Either way, this is an exhibit I sure wish we had!
Mysterious Circumstances
So two mysteries: according to the cartoon, it was on loan to Ripley. Why did he not buy it? Historically we virtually never borrow exhibits, we acquire them outright…..Then assuming Ripley gave it back to the owner, where did it disappear to, never to cross our paths again in our 98-year history.
Over the years there have been a few false leads: we were actually offered real Jivaro shrunken body—but it was female, and more like 18” than 6”—and a couple years ago a mummified “creature”, considered an alien was found in Bolivia that looked similar, but not exactly like “Atta Boy”.
So, is he still out there waiting to be rediscovered? I hope so! I would pay something just to know he still exists, a little more to see him, and a lot to bring him back into the Ripley collection….Believe It or Not!
Source: Atta Boy, the Lost Holy Grail of the Ripley’s Collection
Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog
- Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s profile
- 52 followers
