Believe It Or Not!

"Ripley's 'Believe It Or Not!'" muesum. The Ripley in question was Robert Ripley, a cartoonist and writer by trade but an amateur anthroplogist and entrepreneur by nature. He travelled extensively, in search of the interesting, exotic and odd and recorded them in his illustrations, journals, then radio, short films, muesums, exhibitions, short-films, and television. He lived late 19th century to the late 1950s. His Wikipedia entry, here, suggests he had an interesting and rich life.

Ripley's 'Believe It Or Not' museum is on 42nd St, near Times Square. I didn't expect the grosteque Victorian freak show that was served up to us. Having pictures of bearded women, a wax-work of the "world's ugliest woman", animals with extra heads or limbs or animals lacking thereof (did you know one chicken in Ohio lived for 4 weeks after its head was cut off) is one thing. Having jokey captions to accompany them is quite another.

There were a couple of odd and interesting pieces: the US government's 1950s public information film about what action to take if an atomic bomb explodes near you ("drop and cover"), a 30" parorama made with 70,000 stamps by a Welshman now living in Canada (see bits of it below),

and a rather witty front page celebrating Corrigan's transatlantic flight in 1938. Corrigan was not given permission to fly across the Atlantic, so he claimed he was intending to fly back to California but mistakedly when the wrong way! He beat Lindenbergh's time to get to Ireland and recieved a hero's welcome when he returned to America. He was named "Wrong Way" Corrigan.