Believe it or not! [1929]: a modern book of wonders, miracles, freaks, monstrosities and almost-impossibilities

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: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 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…