Believe It or Not by Ripley

Robert Ripley's syndicated odditorium strip combined newspaper cartoon conventions with factual claims, presenting six illustrated feats: George Washington's 23-foot broad jump, Ivan Grone's 61 goals in 1916 soccer, Ketchel's 23 consecutive knockouts, Stage's one-mile run in five minutes with hands tied, and George Weber's 1,700 successive sit-ups. The strip's layout—discrete panels with captions, exaggerated figure drawing, and recurring visual motifs—exemplified the visual language emerging in Sunday newspaper supplements during the 1920s. Ripley's format proved instantly popular, spawning decades of syndication and establishing the factoid-based comic as a newspaper staple alongside adventure strips and gag cartoons.