Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for June 27, 2023

…but that was nothing compared to the swim from Australia!

As much as I live near Oregon (Clark County, Washington), where exactly is Lost Lake?

That Tolkien anecdote sounds suspicious. The Nobel committee doesn’t reveal who they were considering or why they picked one person over another.

So the Nobel committee is not know for sound choices…

2019 : Peter Handke, Bosnian genocide denierPossibly one of the most genuinely controversial literature awards was assigned to Austrian writer Peter Handke, a known denier of the Bosnian genocide during the war in the Balkans in the 1990s and a close supporter of former Serbia’s president Slobodan Milošević.

Hundreds of people protested outside of the ceremony in Sweden, and almost 60,000 signed a petition asking for the Swedish Academy to revoke the award. Most noticeably, the governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Turkey issued a formal condemnation against the award, while the ambassadors of Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Turkey boycotted the award ceremony.

Don’t fret, Mr. Tolkien. Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize just 11 days after he took office, which he ended up winning. And Mohandas Gandhi was never even nominated for the Peace Prize, despite gaining India’s independence with minimal violence.

That lake in Oregon seems quite similar to my garage.

May the fiord be with you as it is with the sea. And gesundheit.

Ivo Andric, a Yugoslavian won the prize in 1961.

I think the Nobel Committee showed very poor taste.

Their Peace Prize awards are beyond satirizing.

Don’t know when it started, but Henry Kissinger does come to mind.

But, what do those countries know about literature?

The Nobel committees are too political now to be taken seriously. I’m sure Alfred is rolling over in his grave

Nanuq looks like a dog, not a Shepard…

Nanuq’s story could be made into one of those “Homeward Bound” style lost pet stories

“Drains into a lava tube.” Does it refill from the lava tube, or winter moisture, and why doesn’t it continuously drain into the lava tube year round?

The 1961 Nobel Laureate in Literature was the Yugoslavian Ivo Andrić

Yeah, I know. Who?

The amazing part of Nanuq’s story isn’t the 150 miles or the time factor. It’s amazing because he wasn’t eaten by polar bears.

Glad they don’t spell it “Nanook.”

By the time the list of nominees for that Nobel in Literature was revealed Professor Tolkien had passed away.

I’m not a Tolkien fan, but his works have done a lot of good in terms of inspiring good in people.

Turkey protesting? Didn’t they have their own genocide against the Armenians?

I had a problem with Nanuq once. He took a dog-doo snocone and stuffed it in my right eye. He took a dog-doo snocone and stuffed it in my other eye. And the husky wee-wee had blinded me….

Much as I love the Lord of the Rings books, and hate fart-sniffing trophies, objectively, Tolkien’s prose could have benefited from some improvement.

The story itself is nearly flawless, but the writing style is… well, there’s better.

I always preferred the Hobbit, Tolkien’s tone fits that story like a glove.