RIPLEY’S RANGE OF CURIOSITY
HALIFAX’S DISCOVERY CENTRE OPENS EXHIBIT THAT EXPLORES SCIENCE BEHIND THE EXTRAORDINARY
Believe it or not, the Ripley infotainment franchise started in 1918 as an illustrated sports panel in newspapers.
It wasn’t long, though, before Robert Ripley, an American cartoonist, entrepreneur and anthropology enthusiast, would transition into dispensing fun facts about events and objects so unusual that some readers might question the claims.
“He’s travelling the world, seeing all this cool stuff, he’s got museums, he’s got radio shows, he’s the coolest guy in the world,” said John Corcoran, director of travelling shows for Ripley Entertainment Inc. in Orlando, Fla.
“Just imagine, with no internet, encyclopedias being updated every few years, and here’s this guy travelling the world and coming back and saying, ‘Hey, there’s a culture in South America that shrinks human heads.’ That was unbelievable, and he started displaying these things at world’s fairs.”
An aspect of the business today is touring exhibitions comprised of material from the company’s collection of artifacts and displays. For anyone who thinks seeing is believing, head to the Discovery Centre in Halifax, where The Science of Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit opens Saturday.
The interactive exhibit, which is installed on the lower floor of the waterfront complex with other attractions sprinkled throughout the display areas, includes a model of the largest snake on record, a piece of a meteorite from Mars and an animatronic Robert Wadlow, history’s tallest man, that sits and stands for some perspective.
Wyatt Purcell, a Grade 4 student at St. Mary’s Elementary School in Halifax, was happy that he was able to attend a preview of the exhibit Friday.
“I think it’s really fascinating how they pulled all of this together. It was an amazing experience, and it’s very awesome to be the first ones here,” he said.
“Plus, there’s toast here,” said Wyatt, pointing to a mural of Albert Einstein created entirely from pieces of bread heated to different states of done-ness.
Monica LeBlanc, another St. Mary’s student in Grade 4, said, “it was really cool getting to see all the stuff . ... It was just a lot of fun and a really cool experience.”
Grace Leach, who’s in Grade 5 at St. Mary’s, didn’t single out any display in particular. “I think seeing all the stuff here, the artifacts, is really cool.”
Corcoran said the exhibit at the Discovery Centre appropriately enough focuses on the science behind the extraordinary, but the modern manifestations of Ripley’s curiosity started along an unlikely route.
“A slow sports day in 1918 — there’s no NFL, there’s no NHL, there’s no basketball,” he said.
“Ripley’s doing baseball, prize fighting, horse racing, Olympics. It’s December 1918, nothing’s going on, Ripley’s got to produce the panel for the day. He reaches into a pile and finds all these cool sports facts and puts them in a new and unique format. At the top of the panel he writes: Champs and Chumps. But we trace our roots back to that format because a couple of months later he did another one and called it Believe It or Not.”
That contribution would go on to have an impact beyond fans of the unusual, said Corcoran.
“Believe it or not wasn’t a term used in the English vernacular to say something’s amazing until Ripley first wrote it on that panel in 1919.”