Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

Ripley drew all his cartoons upside-down.

Ripley received more mail than any other individual in history-more than 3,500 letters per day, over one million per year. During a Ripley's contest, he received more than 2.5 million letters in just two weeks.

Ripley visited 201 countries during his career, travelling a distance equal to 18 complete trips around the world.

Ripley owned one of the largest and most expensive collections of cars in the world, but he never learned to drive.

The Ripley collection includes 20,000 artefacts, 10,000 photos and more than 130,000 cartoon panels.

During his broadcasting career, Ripley celebrated many "firsts." He was the first to broadcast on a nationwide network from mid-ocean, the first to broadcast from Buenos Aires to New York and the first to broadcast to every nation in the world simultaneously, assisted by a corps of linguists who translated his message.

A memorial to Ripley stands in his hometown of Santa Rosa, Calif., in a church built entirely from one redwood tree.