Robert Ripley
(1893-1949)

Died aged c. 56

Robert L. Ripley was born December 25, 1893 in Santa Rosa, California. His Believe It Or Not cartoon panel was a staple of American newspapers in the first half of the 20th century. The cartoon featured true-life oddities from around the world, always with the tagline "Believe It . . . Or Not!" Ripley’s first cartoon appeared in the New York Globe in 1918. As his readership grew, he began traveling abroad to find information, eventually claiming to have visited 198 different countries. He owned three homes in Florida, one of which was located in Palm Beach. Although Ripley never lived in St. Augustine, he often passed the Castle Warden building and spoke of it as an ideal showplace. After his death, May 27, 1949, the building became home to a unique collection of art objects, oddities and curiosities.

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LeRoy Robert Ripley (February 22, 1890 – May 27, 1949) was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur, and amateur anthropologist, who is known for creating the Ripley's Believe It or Not! newspaper panel series, television show, and radio show, which feature odd facts from around the world. Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little-known facts about unusual and exotic sites. He also included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small-town American trivia ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then depicted by his drawings.

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