In 1918, as a sports cartoonist for the New York Globe, he began the cartoon Believe It or Not! Barren of ideas for the cartoon one day, Ripley strung together a collage of sports oddities.

When a Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon claimed that the United States had no national anthem -- and "The Star-Spangled Banner" was just "a vulgar old English drinking song" -- it triggered ...