Ripley's Believe It or Not!® Museum

News of the Odd

Candyland on Lombard Street

How cool is this? Today is the 60th aniversary of the game Candyland. To celebrate Lomard Street was made into a Candlyland gameboard: Click HERE to watch the video. Today only...so if you are in the San Francisco area...check it out!

Top News

Pure Gold Facial

Have you ever seen a gold facial? This technique is said to improve skin tone...I dunno about all that, but it looks cool.

Broken Glass and Molten Metal

In this article, physics professor David Willey explains the how behind several dangerous-seeming tricks: walking across broken glass, dipping a hand into molten lead, lying on a bed of nails with a cement block broken by sledge hammer, and picking up a red-hot piece of ceramic tile.

The tile is specifically one from the space shuttle, which has custom-made thermal insulation for its underside made from ceramic-composite tiles.

That's neat but, personally, I think the lead dipping is the most impressive. As he explains it:
Before dipping one's fingers in molten lead, the hand is dipped in a bowl of water. Then the drops are shaken off and the hand dipped quickly in and out of the lead. I usually dip the first seven or eight centimeters of my fingers. Heat from the lead goes into evaporating the water and hence not into burning the hand, and the resulting steam layer insulates the hand.

With a big DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME warning, here is a video of someone performing the hand in molten lead trick.

Aesop's Science

Most people have heard of Aesop, the Greek slave and creator of a huge collection of fables, one of which is about a Crow and a Pitcher.

As it turns out, it's more than just a metaphor for the utility of problem solving. Rooks, a member of the crow family, will actually do the same thing when presented with a similar problem.

Not only will they use rocks to raise the water level, but they'll make sure to pick the largest rocks they can to do it the fastest.