page_title: Ripley's Believe It or Not!
section_title: Museums
hierarchical_section_title: Ripley's Believe It or Not! / Museums
caption_attribution_description: English: Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum at Innovative Film City in Bangalore. (Photo - Jim Ankan Deka)
context_page_description: Ripley's Believe It or Not! is an American franchise, founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the Believe It or Not feature proved popular and was later adapted into a wide variety of formats, including radio, television, comic books, a chain of museums and a book series.
  The Ripley collection includes 20,000 photographs, 30,000 artifacts and more than 100,000 cartoon panels. With 80-plus attractions, the Orlando, Florida-based Ripley Entertainment, Inc., a division of the Jim Pattison Group, is a global company with an annual attendance of more than 12 million guests. Ripley Entertainment's publishing and broadcast divisions oversee numerous projects, including the syndicated TV series, the newspaper cartoon panel, books, posters and games.
context_section_description: When Ripley first displayed his collection to the public at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, it was labeled Ripley's Odditorium and attracted over two million visitors during the run of the fair. (In an apparent promotional gimmick, beds were provided in the Odditorium for people who "fainted" daily.) That successful exhibition led to trailer shows across the country during the 1930s, and Ripley's collections were exhibited at many major fairs and expositions, including San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, and Cleveland. In New York City, the famed Times Square exhibit opened in 1939 on Broadway. In 1950, a year after Ripley's death, the first permanent Odditorium opened in St. Augustine, Florida. The Odditorium is housed in the Castle Warden, built in 1888 by an associate of Henry Flagler, President of the Florida East Coast Railway.
  As of December 2010, there are 32 Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditoriums around the world. Odditoriums, in the spirit of Believe It or Not!, are often more than simple museums cluttered with curiosities. Some include theaters and arcades, such as the ones in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Others are constructed oddly, such as the Orlando, Florida Odditorium which is built off-level as if the building is sinking.
  Expected to open summer 2016 is the first Odditorium in the Netherlands,at Dam square in Amsterdam.
caption: Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum at Innovative Film City in Bangalore, India
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D5100", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Ver.1.01", "Image DateTime": "2013:03:03 17:22:04", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2278", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "38614", "Image SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "Image XPComment": "[32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image OffsetSchema": "4168", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "13", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Shutter Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "640", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:03:03 17:22:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:03:03 17:22:04", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "38", "EXIF SubSecTime": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "80", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4928", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3264", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "57", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "2022"}