The San Diego Air & Space Museum is set to unveil a major new exhibition that promises to bend reality, blending historical artifacts with astounding oddities. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” will open its doors on January 31st at 10:00 a.m., transforming a corner of Balboa Park into a cabinet of global curiosities.
The exhibition is an immersive experience designed to surprise, entertain, and awaken the curiosity of visitors.
The collection features meticulously crafted marvels and genuine historical pieces, including:
- A full-scale, matchstick sculpture of NASA’s Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter, built patiently from thousands of individual matches.
- A towering, lifelike animatronic figure of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in recorded history at 8 feet 11 inches, who will share his own story.
- The signed hat of the Tin Man and an actual brick from the Yellow Brick Road, both from the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
- A rare Soviet canine cosmonaut space suit, a technical garment created for dogs on early space missions.
- Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, masterfully assembled entirely from colored dryer lint.
“This one-of-a-kind collection blurs the lines between history, innovation, and imagination—offering an unforgettable experience available only at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.”
Robert Leroy Ripley was a cartoonist, explorer, reporter, and collector but he was, above all, a hunter of the bizarre. Through his iconic Believe It or Not! newspaper columns, radio broadcasts, and television shows, he curated a world of astonishing facts that captured the global imagination. Today, his legacy lives on in museums that continue to showcase these extraordinary stories and curiosities.
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