Believe It or Not! creator Robert Ripley has been inducted into the Sideshow Hall of Fame, at Coney Island USA! Ninety-four years after he drew his first Believe It or Not! cartoon and 79 years after he opened his first Odditorium at the Chicago World’s Fair, Ripley officially joins the esteemed lineup of history’s greatest showmen! Tim was there and he reports on how it all went down!
An exhibit featuring the secretive Area 51 has just opened at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Ripley’s UFO expert Lee Speigel tells us the the irony that the museum, part of the federally funded Smithsonian Museum group, would feature something that the Federal Government itself has claimed doesn’t exist, wasn’t lost on him. Otherwise, it’s a well done, expansive and educational exhibit, he notes.
Additional Unusual, Weird, Wild and Wacky Things Discussed this Week:
• Igor Vovkovinskiy, America’s tallest living man is in a bind. His shoes are uncomfortable and a set of new, custom fitted ones will cost in excess of $16,000, a sum he doesn’t have.
• Angela reports that the sport of Quiddich now exists outside of a Harry Potter film! More than 100 teams gather each year in New York City to compete in the “World Cup” of this bizarre game.
• You’ll hear what an amazing grandmother did on her 101st birthday – just to show up her 75 year old son!
• A unique act in this year’s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’s production of “Dragons,” is an amazing duo called the Hair Hanging Wonders. As the name implies, they hang from their tresses as they perform aerial maneuvers! Marc Hartzman visited with them and reports back to Ripley Radio that they are very careful of what hair products they use!
• Ripley’s Edward Meyer announces that the new exhibit on dinosaurs has just opened at the Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, complete with robotic beasts and one of a kind dinosaur artifacts.
• In the Weird Medical Maladies Minute, Jodi Pliszka, Ripley’s very own Solutionologist, discusses a disorder that prevents a person from ever smiling!
• Ralf talks with the director of the Pima Air & Space Museum about their attempt to fly the largest paper airplane ever flown!
• AND to close out the show we hear Funky Bahia, from the new album by Sergio Mendes, featuring Will.I.Am and Siedah Garrett.
Sideshow Hall of Fame – www.ripleysnewsroom.com/ripleywins
Massive Paper Airplane – http://news.yahoo.com/photos/45-foot-paper-airplane-takes-flight-slideshow/
Quidditch – Making Fictional Sports Real – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120305230210.htm
101 year old Grandmother – http://www.kmov.com/news/off-beat/Grandma-goes-paragliding-143607876.html
Area 51 – http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102382248094-311/ARea+51+Press+Release+1%5b1%5d.pdf
Jodi Pliszka – http://www.headlineitstore.com/about/jodi
Hair Hangers – http://atouchofknowledge.com/