Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 475
June 30, 2016
June 29, 2016
Japan’s Spider Wrestling Festival
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
You’ll be happy to know that during the Japanese Spider Wrestling Festival, you are not required to wrestle a spider. Instead, the spiders wrestle each other.
It’s an annual festival in which female “Kogane” spiders fight each other.
The spiders are captured or reared by locals and entered into the contest. The wrestling itself takes place tournament style until the top 10 spiders are chosen. From there, it’s a single elimination bout until the overall winner is crowned.
But how exactly does one put on a spider wrestling tournament? For starters, you need a stick.
The first spider is placed (by hand) onto the stick. The second spider is then introduced, and the two of them do what comes naturally.
A winner is declared by the following conditions:
One spider cuts the web of the other and sends her falling to the ground
One spider wraps the other in web
One spider bites the other on the abdomen
There’s an official judge and referee. He’s there to make sure things don’t get too far out of hand, and neither spider is seriously injured.
The Argiope, or Writing Spider
By Muhammad Mahdi Karim via wikimedia
One of the odder aspects of the festival is seeing just how much handling the spiders have to go through before and after fighting. This is possible because the Kogane spider (or the Argiope spider as they’re scientifically called) is remarkably docile.
They live in gardens and mostly eat insects and don’t tend to bite larger animals or humans even if they’re being handled roughly. And their venom isn’t very dangerous to people. A bite from one is said to be comparable to a bee sting. Which maybe isn’t as comforting to someone allergic to bees.
The Argiope spider is also sometimes knowns as the writing spider because of the similarity between their web decoration and writing.
The Festival
Even though the wrestling is the main portion of the festival, it isn’t the only attraction. In addition to watching the battle royal, you can watch the spider beauty pageant. The spider with the most beautiful and unique markings is named best in show.
During certain festivals, the same spider can take both titles.
There are also booths where people can learn more about spiders and even get over their fear by handling an Argiope spider if they’re brave enough.
Artist Uses Iron to Make Beautiful Fabric Art
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
First featured in our 2010 Annual, Enter If You Dare, for his fabric art of the Dutch master of light and shadow, Rembrandt; Benjamin Shine has impressed us again with his newer, more colorful, works of art using just fabric and an iron.
Though these stunning portraits may look, from afar, as though they were carefully painted, if you move closer, you’ll notice something curious.
These portraits do not contain a drop of paint but are made entirely from the fabric known as tulle. Tulle is a semi-transparent fabric that looks something like a tiny net (think wedding veil). Shine carefully layers and pleats this diaphanous fabric to affect light and shadows, creating layered matrices of implied lines and shades of color.
His single-color portraits are made from just a single piece of tulle.
Wedding Portrait: Entwine
Shine’s wedding portrait, titled Entwine, was made from two ribbons. One ribbon for himself and one for his wife. The ribbons traced their way through the woods, looping and converging in the trees before culminating into floating portraits of the bride and groom.
The sculpture stretched nearly 500 feet in an allegorical journey representing their relationship’s ups, downs, twists, and turns.
The Dance
Created from over a mile of fabric, The Dance is a sculpture starting with a vase bursting and two dancers materializing as the tulle drifts to the floor.
Shine wanted the dancers to look as though they formed effortlessly, seeming as though the fabric had just fallen this way. He hopes it makes people reflect on how impermanent things of beauty can be.
A video posted by Benjamin Shine (@benjaminshinestudio) on Jul 15, 2015 at 2:32pm PDT
More of Benjamin Shine’s Work:
Man Creates World’s Largest Working Nerf Gun
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
In order to gain an advantage in regular office nerf gun fights, Mark Rober created the world’s largest functioning Nerf Gun.
The gun uses a canister of compressed air from a paintball gun to fire
The paintball tank starts at 3,000 psi, but the tank used for firing is regulated for 80 psi
The darts are made of pool noodles with a toilet plunger attached to the end
The darts travel at 40 mph (64 kph)
A projectile they created traveled 130 yards when fired from the nerf gun
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.
June 28, 2016
Denny Clark Makes Working Tiny Tools
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
RC cars have been a staple of American childhood for decades. Who doesn’t have memories of standing in the driveway with a remote and watching the little car buzz around the concrete? For a lot of us, that sight was enough to fill an afternoon with joy. But for the serious collector, an RC truck isn’t complete without accessories. That’s where Denny Clark comes in.
The sight of a truck with tools or lawn maintenance machines in the back wouldn’t be out of place on your morning commute. But when you think of the cars you played with as a kid, those kinds of small details might be missing. But Clark makes those sorts of accessories to make the RC cars more realistic.
Tiny Tools
Some of the accessories are purely decorative. A jerry can strapped to the rear bumper or a fire extinguisher add to the visuals of an off-road vehicle.
But other tools are actually functional. Equipped with a motor, the hedge trimmers actually move, and the blades work. They may not be strong enough to carve a full topiary, but they could cut down a few blades of grass.
Every aspect of the tiny tools is handmade by Clark except for the motor that makes them work. Using materials such as aluminum, wood, plastic, and steel, Clark handcrafts each individual piece of the tiny tool and then expertly screws them together.
For more information, check out Denny Clark on FaceBook and Youtube.
A Royal Enfield Bullet Motorcycle is Worshipped in India
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Even though it was part of an accident, a Royal Enfield Bullet Motorcycle believed to have supernatural powers is worshiped at a temple in Pali, India.
On Dec. 2nd, 1988, a man was traveling when he lost control of his motorcycle
The police took the bike to the station
The next morning, the bike was found back at the scene of the accident
The police took the bike back to the station and drained the fuel and locked it up
In spite of their efforts, the motorcycle was found back at the scene the next morning
People now pray and make offerings to the bike hoping it will bless them with safe travels
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: A Royal Enfield Bullet Motorcycle is Worshipped in India
June 27, 2016
Electrifying Bounce House Party
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
A bounce house has become a common fixture at kids’ birthday parties. You can hardly get away with inviting kids anywhere if there isn’t a bouncy castle in the mix.
But for all of their popularity, the inflatable structures haven’t gotten any safer.
As if recreating a scene from the opening of The Wizard of Oz, a multi-colored house flew and twisted through the air last week.
The party was held in Niagara County. The family was able to capture unbelievable video of the event as it happened.
Luckily, no one was in the bounce house when the wind took it, but not everyone is so lucky.
Not the First Time
As amazing as it might be that a breeze could be strong enough to lift such a big structure, the most shocking aspect of this story is that it’s not the first time this has happened.
A quick search shows that these events are far more common than they should be. And when it does happen, it rarely has the same happy ending as this story.
In 2014, a fully inflated house was blown away with two children still in it.
Luckily there were no fatalities in this accident.
Even twice is two times too many for this kind of incident, but would you believe that there’s another horrifying moment? Last year during Memorial Day weekend, the same disaster struck a South Florida beach.
How many more incidents have to occur before people stop putting their kids in this things?
Source: Electrifying Bounce House Party
Fibers from Pineapple Leaves Might Replace Leather
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Piñatex™ is a textile made from the fibers in pineapple leaves that closely resembles leather.
The fibers that make up Piñatex are extracted from pineapple leaves
The leaves are put through an industrial process at the end of which emerges the textile
With treatment, the Piñatex can closely resemble leather
The plan is that any object that uses leather (car interiors, cloths, furniture) will be able to use Piñatex instead
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