Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for June 08, 2020

The book “Green Eggs and Ham” was the result of a bet between Theodor Seuss Geisel and his publisher that he could not complete an entire book without exceeding the limit of 50 unique words used.

The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Eggs_and_Ham

J. Fred and the network parted company amid scandalous accusations of harassment by Hollywood star Cheetah Chimp (aka Cheeta, Cheta, and Chita). A subsequent lawsuit was settled for a payment of an undisclosed amount. Fred never worked in TV or film again.

a bet that Australian pastime isn’t being played at this time

Seuss generally didn’t use more than 60 words.

Methinks they should bring back J. Fred and fire the rest of the news division…

Green Eggs and Ham is still considered a classic to this day! Dr. Seuss was truly a writing genius!

“This is Today with Dave Garroway….”

He could have used a lot less than 50 unique words and still made the same point in all his books, etc.

Take care and gesundheit.

I’m glad to know that the watermelon tow rope deal isn’t a requirement.

I still have my J Fred Muggs doll. It’s actually sitting in one of my kitchen shelves. Wish I could post a pic of it.

I don’t want to be around any animal that bites off you fingers, face, and genitals. (Think about it, you can’t climb, you can’t see, and you can’t breed. They’ve got it figured out.)

Gee, I wonder if there is some drinking going on at the Melon Festival.

50 unique words in Green Eggs and Ham, and, ironically, not one of them is ‘unique’…

I seem to recall a chimp called ‘Beulah the Buzzer’ on a day-time quiz show with Bob Barker.

I would say 50 distinct words.

Watermelon skiing, Sounds like the next big replacement sport to be featured on ESPN.

Well I remember Mr Muggs, he was more intelligent than 90% of the news anchors today. Especially if you consider the VIEW!

It breaks my heart that only 50 words were used in Green Eggs and Ham. He left out one of the most important words in the English language: Coffee…

Who started that activity?

Ehh, I think they were all Zippy in disguise…

A Biennial Melon Festival and Watermelon Skiing is the first SENSIBLE thing I have heard about in the Last Three Months!….

…

And years later no one would ever admit they had been in that festival…

In the 1970s, NBC, in partnership with Hanna-Barbera, introduced Peter Puck, an anthropomorphic hockey puck used to promote hockey to children; I think he was in cartoon shorts later in morning news programs on NBC (or was it ABC?); the CBC in Canada also used him.

Re “Green Eggs and Ham”, my hubby, who was older than me, missed out on the Dr. Seuss books. I was reciting lines from GEAH one day, and he thought I was just being silly – he simply wouldn’t believe such a book existed! I had to go to the library to get a copy and show him!

Re the Melon Festival – I hope that Poke Salad Annie’s brothers don’t go to Australia next year and steal all the watermelons out of people’s truck patches, thereby creating a shortage.

I don’t know about Annie, but had a friend in the Navy from West Virginia who said they sometimes had to eat “Poke salad”….

Good "ol Lenwood G.