Wayne Harbour, 51, is a butter & egg man in Bedford, Iowa, who has a peculiar hobby: being skeptical about Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” cartoons. Since 1943, when he doubted a Ripley item about a radish growing out of a carrot, Harbour has sent out 5,600 checking letters near &. far, received 2,200 replies, only a few of which disputed the cartoon.-
But Skeptic Harbour went right on checking Ripley items for himself, last month wrote “the mayor of Delhi” to ask about an Indian dancing girl described as the “Human Top.” Supposedly she could whirl continuously for 24 hours without breaking any of 24 raw eggs suspended on strings from her head.
Last week Butter & Egg Man Harbour got this reply from Delhi’s Chief Commissioner Shankar Prasada: “I am sorry to disappoint you, but I much regret to say that I have not had the pleasure of meeting the ‘Human Top,’ much less see it whirl … I hope that this will be a warning to you and to many other credulous gentlemen not to take seriously . . . the sensational nonsense that is sometimes published about the so-called Mysterious East.” Delhi’s Hindustan Times added its own tart postscript: “Our American friends are … sometimes no better than grown-up children . . . Believe it or not, Americans can believe anything.”
* Supervised by Col. Robert J. Hyland since Robert Ripley’s death in 1949.
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