PREFACE

I make a living out of the fact that truth is stranger than fiction. The “Believe It or Not” pictures that appear in a hundred or so newspapers throughout the country are drawn according to that scale.

Yet, I venture to say that I have been called a liar more often than anybody in the world. Ordinarily when one is called a liar—well, to say the least, one feels hurt. (Sometimes it follows that somebody gets hurt.) But it is different with me. I do not mind it a bit. When I am called a liar by a reader of my cartoons I feel flattered! That short and ugly word is like music to my ears. I am complimented, because it means to me that my cartoon that day contained some strange fact that was unbelievable—and therefore most interesting, and that the reader did not know the truth when he saw it. That is the time when I always think of the comment made by Hamlet on a certain occasion:

I shall not forget the day my cartoon appeared with the illustrated statement that “Lindbergh was the sixty-seventh man to make a non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean.” Who would believe a statement like that? Three thousand wrote in to tell me that they did not. It is true, however. Who will believe that “a day is forty-eight hours long—not twenty-four”; “that Methuselah died before his father”; that “Buffalo Bill never shot a buffalo in his life”; that “a man died of old age before he was seven years old.” Can anybody be expected to believe that “a river runs backward”; “a flower eats mice”; “Napoleon crossed the Red Sea—as Moses did—on dry land”; “Fish climb trees,” etc.?

Those who “doubt truth to be a liar” may be forgiven. The mail brings about a thousand letters a week from readers hoping to catch me in error. Which they never do. (Well, hardly ever.)

Sometimes a reader is blinded by the shining countenance of truth and stumbles into error. Not long ago I printed a short sentence in one of my pictures that contained all the letters of the alphabet. This is it:

John P. Brady gave me a black walnut box of quite a small size.

The next morning brought thirteen letters pointing out that I had left the letter “F” out of the sentence. Now, there was no mistake on my part—all the letters of the alphabet, including the letter “F” were in that sentence, but what a strange thing it was that thirteen readers failed to find it and that each of them thought the same letter was missing.

The first “Believe It or Not” cartoon was an accident.

I had been drawing cartoons for the sports pages for some time when, in the course of a day’s work, I hurriedly put together a few athletic oddities that happened to be lying on my desk and made them up into a cartoon—never for a moment expecting that it meant any more than a day’s work done ... and for the want of a better caption I called it “Believe It or Not.”

It appeared the next day in the old New York Globe, and much to my surprise there was considerable comment about it. The editor of the paper suggested that I make another one if I “could gather together enough stunts.” A week later I had enough facts for another one, and it seemed to be more popular than my usual run of cartoons. Thereafter I made a “Believe It or Not” cartoon a week. A year later, I made two a week, and soon the demand came that I make one every day. Now it looks as though I will never do anything else. And I don’t care if I do.

I would like to answer the common question:

“Where do you get all the strange things that you draw about?”

Everywhere, all the time.

Here and there—day and night; through observation, conversation, and edification. I am constantly searching—everywhere all the time.

Travel, of course, is an unfailing source of oddities—“The world’s mine oyster.” Once or twice each year I venture forth to foreign lands for pearls to string in the “Believe It or Not” columns of the newspapers. I have traveled in sixty-four different countries, and hope to see them all before I am through. (Oh, yes, there are more than sixty-four countries.)

Sometimes suggestions are sent in to me, but, unfortunately, the usable ones are rare. Someday I hope to meet James Waldo Fawcett, of New York, Doc Applegate, of Ogallala, Neb., and J. Dennis Butler, of Alameda, Cal., and thank them for their interesting contributions. They are among the few who know what is interesting to people other than themselves.

I have been drawing the “Believe It or Not” pictures for eight years and find that it grows easier each day. There is no danger of running out of material (as some readers think): the supply is inexhaustible.

I have enough “queeriosities” on hand to make a hundred cartoons, and a library of strange facts and curious bits of knowledge enough to fill several books like this one. (A fair warning!)