Sunday, April 16, 2017

The Oddyssey: Robert Ripley and his world.



Robert L. Ripley, who was heavyset and dainty, wore his dark widow’s peak slicked back flat and had teeth so jutting and crooked that, until he got some of them yanked out and straighter fakes jammed back in (which hurt like hell), he looked remarkably like a vampire. He had a girlfriend called Okie and a dog named Dokie. Among his prized possessions was a bullet that a man had coughed up forty-nine years after being shot in the chest. Ripley travelled all over the world to collect what he called “queeriosities”: the skull of a Tibetan man, the shrunken head of an Ecuadoran woman, the penis of a whale.

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