Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 455
September 13, 2016
Gostra is a Sport Featuring People Running Up A Greasy Pole
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Gostra is a traditional game played in Malta where people climb up a greasy pole to pull out a flag and win a prize.
Gostra dates back to the Middle Ages
It was practiced all through the festive summer months
The pole is 10 meters long, sticks out over the sea, and only half of it is covered in grease
Each of the three flags on a gostra pole has a religious meaning
The blue and white flag of the Madonna
The yellow and white Vatican standard
The Belgian tricolor representing the ancestral homeland of St. Julian
Each flag represents a special prize for whoever can reach them
MINI BION
“BIONs” – short for Believe It or Not – is the word we use at Ripley’s to refer to anything that is unbelievable and worthy to become part of Ripley’s lore and collection.
Source: Gostra is a Sport Featuring People Running Up A Greasy Pole
Meet the Oregon Farm that Specializes in Goat Yoga
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Teaching goats to do yoga would be a feat. I imagine it would be a bit of a cash cow, also, with farmers lining up to get limber and relaxed goats. But at the Oregon farm that offers goat yoga classes, it’s not the goats exercising so much as people exercising around goats.
Located in Willamette Valley, Oregon, No Regrets Farm is owned by Lainey Morse. Initially, Morse was hosting a children’s birthday party at the farm. The child’s mother was a yoga instructor, and the idea hit her. She asked Morse if she could host a yoga class in the field.
She supplied the Yoga, I supplied the Goats and thus Goat Yoga was born!
Here’s Looking At You, Kid
The idea was an overwhelming success. People drove in from over 100 miles away in Portland to participate in the unique class. They enjoyed themselves so much that many of them admitted they’d gladly make the commute weekly for the experience.
To an outsider, it seems like an odd combination. Yoga is meant to be a quiet, meditative experience. And a quick search of YouTube will show you that animals and yoga don’t really mix. So what makes this combination work so well?
I think everyone that participates welcomes the interruptions from the goats. They just want to be petted and loved on and since they’re calm animals, they seem to go well with Yoga.
Whatever the reason, Goat Yoga has been a resounding success and now Morse has classes booked in advanced. Her waiting list is up to 500 people. Everyone wants to yoga with the goats.
You can find out more about the classes from No Regrets Farm website, and by following them on Facebook.
10 of the Most Unbelievable Beards and Moustaches of 2016
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
It’s that time of year! This year, the 2016 National Beard and Moustache Championships took place in Nashville, TN, and that means photographer Greg Anderson was on hand. Anderson has been present at three of the last four competitions. It’s safe to say he’s got his follicle photography skills down to a science.
The organized contest began in 1990 in Höfen/Enz, Germany. Since 1995, the competition was held every two years. Typically a European event, the contest came to the States for the first time in 2003. But 2014 was the first time it shifted from once every two years to once a year. Now, with beards and moustaches peaking in popularity, the National Beard and Moustache Championships are a big deal.
You can see the entire collection of entrants at Anderson’s Facebook page. You can also check out the rest of his awesome photography on his personal website.
The Astounding Entries
Source: 10 of the Most Unbelievable Beards and Moustaches of 2016
September 12, 2016
Introducing the Shear Madness of Sheep Dung Spitting
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
In 2015, Irvinestown, Ireland’s 37th Annual Lady of the Lake festival introduced a brand new competition—sheep dung spitting!
This bizarre contest requires participants to take sheep excrement into their mouths and attempt to spit it the furthest. Competition creator, organizer and participant, Joe Mahon was inspired by a few pints and similar spitting competitions in Africa, such as Bokdrol spoeg, kudu antelope dung spitting.
Remarkably, 48 daring competitors participated, including the festival queen, the Lady of The Lake, Eimear Donnelly. After a heated tiebreaker, Mark Leonard won first place with a 29.5 foot (9.83 yard) spit!
Organizers had 30 pieces of sheep dung ready for the competition, thinking it would be enough, but with so many entrants they had to recycle 18 pieces that had already been used!
Mahon regaled that during the competition, one entrant, Paddy McCann, spat his dung 12 feet with his dentures in, but when told to remove them and try again, he ended up swallowing the dung!
Proud of what he hopes to become a not-so-tasty tradition, Mahon relished in his role and even sourced dung directly from the sheep!
ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER ALL-NEW ANNUAL!
Ripley’s has spent the past year collecting the most unbelievable stories from around the world, filling Unlock the Weird to the brim with fantastic, fun, and even freaky features. Join us back here every week for an exclusive inside look at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Unlock the Weird!
Source: Introducing the Shear Madness of Sheep Dung Spitting
September 11, 2016
September 10, 2016
September 9, 2016
Unboxing Medieval Torture Devices
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
In This Episode
In the U.S., we might be protected from cruel and unusual execution methods, but that wasn’t always the case. As recently as 1977, the guillotine was still being used in France! Hold onto your hats; because heads will roll in this week’s Unboxing episode.
Today: Medieval Torture and Execution Devices
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Medieval Torture Devices
By Paul Glazzard via Wikimedia
One thing has always been clear: People are good at finding ways to hurt and kill other people. Sometimes this is done in service of selfish and personal means. But sometimes it’s done at the whims of the state, or as punishment. It’s been true all throughout history that people are punished for killing people by being killed by other, more official, people.
Necessity being the mother of invention, that’s how we got a lot of the torture devices seen in this episode.
The classic guillotine may not have been a torture device in the strictest sense. It was used purely as a means of execution of the guilty party. But I imagine being walked up to one, and seeing this imposing sight before you would have been a kind of torture all its own.
Seen here is a Hallifax Gibbet. It’s one of the early precursors to the more modern guillotine. The main difference between the two is that the guillotine used a blade with a 45° angle in order to make the execution cleaner and more humane. The gibbet had a rounded, axe-blade.
Stocks
Placed purely in the torture category, Pillory, or stocks as its more commonly known, was a very common medieval punishment.
I wonder what these two are guilty of By JIP via Wikimedia
Not all criminals commit crimes worthy of physical punishment. In the Middle Ages many crimes were punished by forms of public humiliation. The stocks, were an uncomfortable punishment but they didn’t inflict real physical pain; aside from a bad back and a crick in the neck maybe.
Typically, however, the stocks were set up in the town square where everyone could see, comment, and react to the criminal. Often the response would be to pelt the prisoner with foodstuffs and garbage.
The My Believe it Or Not! Moment Contest Draws to a Close
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Here at Ripley’s, summer and contests go together like peas and carrots. We announced the writing contest back in May, and now it’s drawn to a close. Announcing the contest winners is something that feels a little bittersweet. On the one hand, we’re happy to have winners to tell you about. On the other hand, it means another great contest has ended.
We asked you all to write in and tell us about some of your most unbelievable moments, and you responded with aplomb. Without further adieu, here are the winners of the My Believe it Or Not! Writing Contest.
Contest Winners
The winner of our kids age 8 and under for a prize of $500 is Otto Collins of Maitland, Florida. Otto sent his essay in written on a milk jug.
The milk jug was important because his story had to do with building an igloo in Florida out of empty milk jugs!
He and his brothers collected the gallon jugs for four months before they started their fun project. They used hot glue guns to make sure everything stayed together.
In the end, the igloo was 10-feet-wide, and nearly five-feet-tall! Otto did mention in his essay that it was a bit stinky inside the structure because the jugs weren’t as clean as they could have been.
Our second winner was 12-year-old Maeve Graham of Chicago, Illinois. Maeve told us all about her goldfish with a see-through eye named Percy. Taking home a prize of $500, she surely is a champ, not a chump!
Overall Winner
The grand prize went to Rich Beran of Kasota, Minnesota. If you’re feeling at all bad about not winning, maybe seeing the story it took to win will put you at ease. No one would want to go through what Rich went through, but it does make for a great story.
Rich sent his essay in written on a slab of wood, and I’ll let the picture do all the explaining.
Being impaled by a branch while trimming a tree is certainly a story worth the $2,500 grand prize.
Honorable Mention
For most of the summer, it looked like Alan St. Louis of Nashua, New Hampshire would be our adult winner, but he was just barely beat out in week 13 by Rich Moran. So to Alan we offer this Honorable Mention.
He wrote about his lifelong dream to sing the national anthem at Fenway during a Red Sox game.
He’s accomplished that, but he’s also done a bit better. In an effort to gain enough name recognition to be allowed to sing at Fenway, Alan set multiple world records for singing the anthem. He has sung it 1,325 times in the last four years, and he holds six records for the most National Anthems sang.
2012 “Most National Anthems in One Year with 217 Performances”
2014 “Most National Anthems in One Day with 10 Performances”
2014 “Most National Anthems in Three Days with 21 Performances”
2015 “Most National Anthems in One Year with 325 Performances”
2016 “The High Altitude National Anthem World Record in a Hot Air Balloon”
2016 “Most National Anthems in One Year with 500 Performances”
Congrats!
All of these stories will have displays in one of our ODDitoriums, and they’ll be featured in a future cartoon.
We’d like to offer a big time congratulations to all of our winners! And a huge thank you to everyone who submitted their weird, wacky, and unbelievable stories for our contest. Ripley’s has always depended on true stories from readers and fans, and we strive to continue that tradition each year.
With that being said, keep an eye out for more contests in the future.
Source: The My Believe it Or Not! Moment Contest Draws to a Close
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