Ripley's Believe It or Not! Special Edition 2008

Everyone's heard of "Ripley's Believe it or not" but did you know there was a real man named Robert Ripley, who started the whole thing? He was a sports columnist for a New York newspaper, who decided to draw cartoons about bizarre events and people's amazing accomplishments. Ripley received as many as 170,000 letters a week from readers. One reader sent a letter telling how his dog, a beagle, ate pieces of glass. That boy was named Charles Schulz, the cartoonist who would grow up to write the Peanuts comic strip; the glass-chomping beagle would be the inspiration for Snoopy.

In this big, colorful book, you can read about such things as a daredevil dachshund who skydives with his owner; a burglar who was caught napping in an empty coffin in the funeral home he was trying to steal from; a man who has collected his own navel lint since 1984 (ugh); and (the man pictured on the cover of the book) a person who can put 264 drinking straws into his mouth. In addition, there are fascinating "Ripley Replay" snippets from long ago.

I'm a sucker for these books, which provide plenty of conversational topics for weeks. Tons of fun!