Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for December 02, 2012

I have an aunt who’s a mother of ten, but not a grandmother of 700 (don’t know how many grandkids exactly she and her husband have) nor is close to 100 years of age.

“then”? Really?

Why do we die on our birthday?

I agree. My in-laws had 12. Ten reached adulthood and had kids of their own. She is 84 years old and has 37 grandchildren and presently 40 great-grandchildren and counting.

I went to a lot of trouble to learn to speak English correctly. I don’t know why, nobody else seems to.

Well, my birthday was yesterday, but I’m still here. HA!!

When will you get tired of calling people Nazis, simply because you don’t agree with them.

“Then” or “than” wouldn’t matter with any other comic strip; but one that deals with facts….? What else don’t they check?

Each of Justina’s 10 kids would have had to produce 70 kids for this to be true. So it doesn’t appear that this comic strip deals with facts.

Birthday counts the first one. So, all those who died at birth or were stillborn are counted as dying on their birthday.

Take your name-calling elsewhere!

OK “Children!” No one is perfect!

“Than” any other day of the year. Interesting… but if we are to believe you, spell it correctly.

Thank you for teaching me to be paranoid of people driving home from late-night Christmas parties. (I turn 23 on the 26th.)

I’m beginning to see why we are so terrifying overpopulated. Too bad people (all over the world) can’t grasp the concept of exponential replication.

You have a 100% chance of being born on your birthday.

Ha ha ha so true! It’s the little things that finally finish us off.

You need some anger management as quickly as possible, before you burst an artery.

I guess birthday excitement leads to more heart attacks. Or more self-destructive depression.Guinness reports a man who had more children than this woman has grandchildren. A leader, natch.

By “700 grandchildren”, they mean “descendants beyond children” (great-, great-great). http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/61205

We have an expression for the granny with 700 grandchildren here in Japan. We call it a “bubber meiser”.

than

I would simply call her lucky to have lived so long. And hope she doesn’t die on her birthday.

@N7326 Foxtrot: If you had learned it really well, your sentence would have read: “…nobody else seems to have”;instead of ending in a preposition.

As for the “dying on your birthday,” phenomenon, I’d have to disagree. I’ve looked at obits and headstones and rarely see the same month and date for their birth and death. It’s just another day out of 365 or 366 other days in our calendar.

700 Grand children? I think they must be generically grouping any descendants further down from “children” to get to 700, otherwise each one of her children had 70 kids. Impressive, regardless, if they’re implying that they’re all still alive.

That means each of her children had 70 children!!!!

There is an easy way to remember it, I think. “then” goes with “if”, believe it or not

You spelled psychopath wrong. You’re welcome. P.S. I prefer to think of myself as a Fascist, or possibly a Decembrist.