Robert Ripley included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small-town American trivia ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then depicted by his drawings.
15 Facts About Robert Ripley
2.
LeRoy Robert Ripley was born on February 22,1890, in Santa Rosa, California, although his exact birthdate is disputed.
3.
Robert Ripley dropped out of high school after his father's death to help his family, and at age 16, he began working as a sports cartoonist for various newspapers.
4.
In 1919, Ripley married fourteen-year-old film actress Beatrice Roberts, a child 15 years his junior.
5.
Robert Ripley made his first trip around the world in 1922, publishing his travel journal in the newspapers.
6.
Robert Ripley became fascinated with unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures.
7.
In 1926, Robert Ripley's cartoons moved from the New York Globe to the New York Post.
8.
Robert Ripley published a guide to the game of American handball in 1925.
9.
Robert Ripley prospered during the Great Depression, netting $500,000 a year by the end of the 1930s.
10.
Funding for Robert Ripley's highly publicized global travels were provided by the Hearst organization.
11.
Robert Ripley appeared in a Vitaphone musical short, Seasons Greetings, with Ruth Etting, Joe Penner, Ted Husing, Thelma White, Ray Collins, and others.
12.
World travel became impossible during World War II, so Robert Ripley concentrated on charity pursuit.
13.
Robert Ripley completed only 13 episodes of the series before he became incapacitated by severe health problems.
14.
Robert Ripley was buried in his home town of Santa Rosa in the Oddfellows Lawn Cemetery, which is adjacent to the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery.
15.
Robert Ripley became a wealthy man, with homes in New York and Florida, but he always retained close ties to his home town of Santa Rosa, California, and he made a point of bringing attention to the Church of One Tree, a church built entirely from the wood of a single 300-ft -tall redwood tree, which stands on the north side of Juilliard Park in downtown Santa Rosa.