Fertility Statues on Display at Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in Hollywood.

Entertainment/Features/Calendar Editors

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--May 21, 2002

Another fertility frenzy is about to begin in Hollywood. Ripley's Believe It or Not!'s internationally renowned African fertility statues are on their second international tour and will be unveiled in Hollywood on Thursday, May 23, 2002, at the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum at 6780 Hollywood Blvd. The statues will be located in the museum's lobby so would-be parents can touch them for free. They will remain on display in the Ripley's Hollywood Museum through June 23, 2002.

"I was trying to get pregnant for 11 years and even went through several infertility procedures but nothing worked," said Lydia Micheli, a Menifee, California resident and true believer. "The doctors couldn't figure out why I couldn't get pregnant. Then one night I was watching TV and heard about how all these women were getting pregnant after touching the statues. I decided it was worth a try so I went to Ripley's Museum and touched them myself. Three months later I was pregnant with a baby boy."

The two statues, acquired from the Baule Tribe of the Ivory Coast, first arrived in the lobby at the Ripley Entertainment corporate headquarters in Orlando, FL in 1993. During the one year the statues adorned the lobby, six of the company's 20 staffers became parents and seven other associates, including the office's Airborne Express delivery women, were soon expecting their own bundles of joy.

Seven years and more than 40 tour stops later, the statues have been around the world twice, making front page news in Hong Kong, Denmark, Thailand, England, Canada, Australia, the Philippines and Korea and are credited with over 900 births from women who visited Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museums to touch the famous statues.

"For over three years now, we have been inundated with requests to display these statues again," said Edward Meyer, Vice President of Publishing for Ripley's Believe It or Not! "Our office receives at least three dozen calls a day asking for the statues so Ripley's has decided to tour them again so women across the globe will have one more opportunity to try to make their dreams come true."

For more information visit www.ripleys.com.

-- On Thursday, May 23, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Fertility

Statues will be unveiled and moms who have become pregnant

after touching the statues and want-to-be-moms will be on hand

to tell their stories.