Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for June 29, 2020

My parents (father and mother; stepmother came in 2007 three years after mother’s death) were married in 1975. If the pet rock debuted before October of that year, I wonder if they saw the advertisements and commercials for such a thing.

The return of a Revolutionary mummy

https://strangeremains.com/2014/02/15/the-return-of-a-revolutionary-mummy/

It was found near the Greek island of Antikythera, so it was called the Antikythera Mechanism.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/17/15650210/antikythera-mechanism-discovery-anniversary-analog-astronomical-computer

I had a pet rock,it died..

The Pet Rock—So there were more than a million really stupid people that bought a common rock that they could find almost anywhere, even in their own back yard?

My little sister bought me one as a joke 20th birthday present so I could have a “pet” in the barracks, when I was stationed in Arizona. The “training manual” that came with the rock was funny enough to be worth the $3.95 by itself.

Well, if you think pet rocks are stupid, dust bunny pets are just filthy clumps of dust with god knows what in them, making them, in my opinion, much more ridiculous and can actually be harmful for people with dust allergies like me…

Let’s not forget sea monkeys, which didn’t look like the advertised product.

Who’d want to disturb a mummified hero? Let him rest.

The post about John Paul Jones left me with so many questions. I know what I’ll be researching today.

“I wonder how many stupid people there are in the country?” "I know how to find out! Let’s take some rocks, write a “training manual”, package them, and sell them as pets!"

… nostalgia…

…don’t laugh…

…it seems we are all a little stupid are now, too…

There were also Pet Rock t-shirts, pendant necklaces, story books, Mom and Dad Pet Rocks and their little family of pebbles.

The originals can be found on eBay, usually priced from $10 to $30.

The latest version is the USB Pet Rock, complete with charging cable… also on eBay.

I remember a photo, in a motorcycle magazine I think, of a rock with a little puddle next to it. The caption; bad rock.

How about buying snow! https://shipsnowyo.com/

Y’know, folks in the 70s did a LOT of drugs…..

“I have not yet begun to decompose”

I have it on good authority that Mr. Jones did not care.

Take care and gesundheit.

John Paul always wanted to see Paris. “I’ll see Paris if it’s the last thing I ever do!” he said. Then he got lost in a cemetary.

And now there are abandoned rocks everywhere. Adopt a Rock!

Well, I do not have to change its litter or let it out to toilet, but can I still walk it?

The Pet Rock, right up there with Chia Pet.

Maybe someone learned that “petros” meant rock and thought…

I really wish people would learn how to speak/type. “The corpse of John Paul Jones, a Naval War hero of the American Revolution, was missing….” flows MUCH better.

Not only was John Paul Jones in an abandoned cemetery, it had been built over and the researchers (U.S. Ambassador to France Gen. Horace Porter, who had searched for six years to track down the body using faulty copies of JPJ’s burial record) had to dig underground and search several possible coffins (5 lead coffins were exhumed). They used a coin with JPJ’s image to identify the body, which was in a lead coffin that HAD been filled with alcohol (since evaporated) but it did preserve the body well.

JPJ’s body was brought to the United States aboard the USS Brooklyn (CA-3), escorted by three other cruisers. On approaching the American coastline, seven U.S. Navy battleships joined the procession escorting Jones’s body back to America. On April 24, 1906, JPJ’s coffin was installed in Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, following a ceremony in Dahlgren Hall, presided over by President Theodore Roosevelt who gave a speech paying tribute to JPJ and holding him up as an example to the officers of the Navy. On January 26, 1913, the Captain’s remains were finally re-interred in a magnificent bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.

It is truly a beautiful place to visit.

I sent for a pet rock. It was dead on arrival.

Well, it’s like I always said, after the pet rock craze died, it made a darn fine paperweight….

That “Celstial ‘computer’” is called the Antikythera mechanism, and its function was only figured out something like 10 years ago.

Interesting story about John Paul Jones. He died in 1792 and was preserved in alcohol and interred in a lead coffin in an unmarked grave in Paris at the Saint Louis Cemetery.

The cemetery was sold four years later by the revolutionary government and was forgotten about. Then 113 years later after a six year search, his grave was found and was uninterred. After all that time his body was still in such good shape that he was still identifiable when compared to a bust of him.

In 1906 his body was brought the America where re-interred in Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy. Then in 1913 was re-interred in a bronze and marble sarcophagus in the Naval Academy Chapel.

Pretty much. Yeah.