Bly the Rice Writer

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Ernest L. Blystone (1887-1963) was known as “Bly the Rice Writer.” He was famous in the 1930s in Ardara, a small western Pennsylvania hamlet hidden in a fold of the rolling hills between Trafford and Irwin. On 2 June 1933, the local paper^{[citation needed]} ran an 11-line story on Blystone leaving for the Chicago World's Fair. It read: “Bly the Penman, one of Ardara's most noted residents, left last week for the world's fair at Chicago, where he will demonstrate his fine writing ability during the entire time the fair is in operation. Following the close of the fair in October, Blystone will go on a six-month tour, having signed a year's contract with Ripley, famous cartooner of Believe It Or Not, who has featured Bly a number of times.”

Blystone had met with an accident on a railroad when he was 19 years old, breaking his hip, both pelvis bones, right arm and left ankle, and four fingers were amputated from his left hand. Doctors gave him only a few hours to live, but slightly more than a month later he walked from the hospital unassisted, and a year later he was playing baseball with an artificial hand of his own construction. In addition, he taught himself exquisite penmanship. To support his family he would establish a booth at parks, carnivals and fairs, where he would decorate watch dials, key tags and other trinkets with fancy writing.

His specialty, though, was miniature writing. He succeeded in writing 2,871 letters on a single grain of rice, winning a Rockne Six Sedan, offered in the national Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” contest in 1932. He later wrote 14,164 letters on a single grain of rice, taking 98 hours to accomplish the feat. In 1936, he wrote a Christmas greeting to movie actress Jean Harlow on a strand of her own hair. Another feat was writing three lines of lettering on a human hair. He wrote the Lord's Prayer on a hair, and wrote the same prayer 101 times inside a circle the size of a dime. He wrote the Lord's Prayer twice inside circle size of a small ordinary pin head. He wrote the name “Ripley” 12,600 times inside a square the size of a postage stamp. Ripley selected him as #3 of his Ten Best Believe It Or Nots ever featured. Blystone was featured three times in Ripley's “Believe It Or Not” cartoons, as well as five times in John Hix’s “Strange As It Seems” cartoons. He appeard in the “Strange As It Seems Show” in San Diego in 1936, as part of the California International Exposition, and also with the John Hix Show at the New York World Fair in 1939.^{[citation needed]}

The grain of rice, the pen and the magnifying glass with which it was made were on exhibition in the Believe It Or Not Odditorium at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933. They were later moved to the Ripley collection in New York City. The artificial hand he had constructed was donated in 1944 and is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame located in Cooperstown, NY. Always tinkering, Blystone died while fixing his car. His third cousin, Richard Blystone, is a foreign correspondent for CNN.