Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Episode #3
First aired January 26, 2000 (Rated PG-V)
Segments:
Bikini Barber
Bill Black is a barber who knows the value of a good head of hair. After cutting his clients’ hair, he doesn’t just throw away the clippings, he sweeps them into his basement, where they ultimately become clothing. That’s right - Black cleans and dries the stored hair and weaves it into thread. He uses this thread to sew swimsuits, vests, ties and even suits – all from his own designs.
Pyro Boy
By day, he’s a webmaster…but by night, Wally Glenn is Pyro Boy. Obsessed with fireworks, Wally dons a fire retardant suit and straps on over 20 pounds of fireworks and other explosives. The fuses are lit and Wally Glenn becomes a human fireworks display! Now this pyromaniac will perform a different and even more dangerous stunt. Armed with his suit of fireworks, Wally will attempt to travel through rings of fire without igniting the fuses on his back, or this could be his last performance.
Human Calculator
When Joe Sullivan was diagnosed as autistic, experts told his family not to expect too much from their son. But Joe is an autistic savant, which means he is blessed with extraordinary abilities despite his developmental disabilities. In the savant world, he's known as a "lightning calculator." Joe can beat any computer in a complicated multiplication or division problem and he can tell you what date Easter will fall on in the year 7910. He can also look at a five-gallon jar of beans and know exactly how many beans it contains. Sound familiar? That's because the popular Oscar-winning movie "Rainman" was based on Joe's life. But in fact, Joe's case is extremely rare --there are fewer than 100 such documented cases in world literature.
Millenium Force
When faced with a life or death situation, police and military authorities are forced to act quickly. Unfortunately, criminals are sometimes subjected to lethal force unnecessarily. With the development of less-lethal technology, bizarre new police weapons have been created to fight 21st century crime. Stink pellets can be used in riot situations to disperse a crowd. A "sticky" shocker produces a sticky substance that when fired adheres to the subject and induces electronic shocks for 8 seconds. We will meet the man who makes his living being shot at by lasers, phazers and mace as the human guinea pig for these new weapons.
Cyborg
Last August, Kevin Warwick underwent surgery to implant a transponder chip under his forearm. The chip was encased in a glass capsule, which contained an electromagnetic coil and a number of silicon chips. A radio signal was sent to the chip, and the chip then transmitted a unique signal to computers in Kevin’s office building. The moment he walked in his office door, Kevin was recognized by the building computers. The computers automatically opened doors for him, downloaded his email, and traced his whereabouts anywhere in the facility. Now Kevin, a professor from England, is part man, part computer...and the world's first cyborg.
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