Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for December 21, 2021

“Nearly Ten Bull Snakes”??? What? Were they chopped into pieces and there were ALMOST Ten Snakes or did these guys not know how to count up to ten? And We’re NOT talking 100 or more. It’s “NEARLY” Ten. Ripley’s bar for these items is pretty low.

Was the US submarine totaled?

US submarine captain: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Timmy in the well: “Lassie, that’s a bunch of BULL!”

“I’m tired of all these snakes in a pipe.”

That sub was probably in the Dragon’s Triangle,

My topic choice tonight? In Matthew McConaughey’s own words: Whale, Whale, Whale let’s take a look.

A teacher was teaching her class about whales. She said that it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human being as even though it was a gigantic animal, its stomach was very small.

A little girl put up her hand and said that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.Irritated, the teacher insisted that a whale couldn’t possibly swallow a human. The little girl said, “When I get to Heaven, I’ll ask Jonah.”.

The teacher replied, “What if Jonah went to Hell?”.

The girl said: “Then you ask him.”

Until next time.

A cannibal came home from work, where her husband was in the process of stewing an enormous wrestler. She wrinkled her nose. “What’s cooking, good looking? Because that meat has an incredibly strong aroma.”

and the captain was relieved of command

And that’s not bull about those snakes.

Take care, may famed lobster Fred “I’ve Got A Whale Of A Story For You” Pinchord be with you, and gesundheit.

“Nearly”? Where’s the rest of it?

That smashed up U.S. sub – they had an episode of the once-forgotten “Sealab 2020” about a submarine that crashed into an undersea mountain…

They remade it straight on the parody version, “Sealab 2021”, probably to show how boring the original show was… (and it was; the things we kids would watch on Saturday mornings back in the 1970s…). :-P

The sub hitting a mountain under water in 2021 wasn’t the first time.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/what-happens-when-us-navy-submarine-hits-underwater-mountain-166703

these are getting kind of very believable lately

Saved the whale? Or the lobster trap? Jebus, I wish Ripley would be more specific!

This suggests China have discovered stealth mountain technology, and we in the US need to develop our own stealth mountains. Otherwise we’ll have a mountain gap

China purposefully left some underwater mountains uncharted…

The Chinese government tried to raise a stink about that submarine incident. They accused the U.S. government and navy about lying about the cause of the damage to the sub, and also claimed Chinese territorial waters were violated. They often make claims about their territorial waters or airspace being violated. They claim their airspace & water space extends farther out than other countries recognize.

Whales and other sea animals becoming entangled is too common now. Finding one and cutting the net, rope, or whatever to free the animal is not an unusual story now.

I hope our underwater mountains are bigger than China’s

Is “nearly ten” something akin to “about 9”? Weird wording, wasn’t it?

That was the second US submarine to hit an uncharted undersea mountain.* Sadly, the first one had fatalities. The “uncharted” mountain was in fact known but wasn’t on the charts they were using to navigate. Oopsie.

*Makes you wonder if they were driving with the headlights off! ;-}

Dang those wily Chinese! Now they’re planting uncharted mountains under water!

Wiktionary says that “bit” is also correct, but that it’s rare.

I guess the sonar on the sub wasn’t working.