Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little-known facts about unusual and exotic sites. He also included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small-town American trivia ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then depicted by his drawings.
LeRoy Robert Ripley was born around February 22, 1890, in Santa Rosa, California, although his exact birthdate is disputed. He dropped out of high school after his father's death to help his family, and at age 16, he began working as a sports cartoonist for various newspapers. In 1913, he moved to New York City. While drawing cartoons for The New York Globe newspaper, he created his first “Believe It or Not!” cartoon, published in the December 19, 1918, issue. With a positive response from readers, the cartoon began appearing weekly.
In 1919, Ripley married fourteen year old film actress Beatrice Roberts, a child 15 years his junior. He made his first trip around the world in 1922, publishing his travel journal in the newspapers. He became fascinated with unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures. Because he took the veracity of his claims quite seriously, in 1923, he hired a researcher and polyglot named Norbert Pearlroth as a full-time assistant. In 1926, Ripley's cartoons moved from the New York Globe to the New York Post.

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