Robert L. (Robert LeRoy) Ripley

Born in Santa Rosa, California, in 1890, Robert L. Ripley became a newspaper cartoonist while still very young. He first made his name in sports cartooning, but his career changed when he began drawing the feature that became Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, a series built around unusual facts, records, and odd discoveries from around the world.

The feature became enormously popular and expanded far beyond newspapers into radio, television, books, and museum-style attractions known as Odditoriums. Ripley traveled widely in search of material, and his work helped shape popular fascination with the bizarre, the surprising, and the little-known.

Ripley died in New York City in 1949, but the franchise he created continued long after his death. His lasting appeal comes from a simple idea that still works today: truth can be every bit as strange as fiction.