Robert L. Ripley

Suffered a heart attack on the air shooting his 13th episode of "Believe It Or Not". Ironically, the segment he had just completed was on the origins of the song "Taps" which is frequently played at funerals.

He was an actor and writer, known for Star Tonight (1955), Believe It or Not (1949) and The Season's Greetings (1931). He was married to Beatrice Roberts.

Segments of his 1949 TV show were filmed in his Mamaroneck, New York mansion.

On January 1, 1931, "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" ran a cartoon stating that the USA had no national anthem. While "The Star Spangled Banner" (based on Francis Scott Key's poem "The Defense of Fort McHenry" set to the tune of the British drinking song "To Anacreon in Heaven" by John Smith) was often used as an anthem, it had never been official. Within days, millions of letters poured into Congress, demanding that the song be officially adopted. On March 3, 1931, an act of Congress officially designated "The Star Spangled Banner" as the National Anthem of the United States of America.

One cartoon alone, in which he stated that Charles Lindbergh was not the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane, drew 170,000 letters. This cartoon made Ripley so famous that postmen forwarded his mail even without a full address. Envelopes simply addressed "To Rip" or "To the World's Biggest Liar" were all delivered. One man even sent a letter written in a microscopic code that could only be deciphered with a magnifying glass. The bizarre forms of addresses and the sheer volume of mail was enough for the U.S. Postmaster General to issue a decree in 1930: "mail to Ripley would not be delivered if the address was incomplete or indecipherable." The law had little effect and "Rip-O-Mania" had swept the world.

Robert L. Ripley was born on December 25, 1893 in Santa Rosa, California, USA as Robert Leroy Ripley.