From ROBERT ALLEN
‘Who or what Ripley was I do not know’ (Ariadne, 27 July). He was Robert
Leroy Ripley, born in California in 1893. He went to New York in 1910 to
work as a sports cartoonist. But his fame rests on the ‘Believe it or not!’
series (vividly described by Ariadne), which he began writing and illustrating
in 1918 and which was syndicated in newspapers worldwide. That title earned
Ripley a place in all the dictionaries of quotations. He died in 1949.
Robert Allen Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
