NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario -- The Ripley's Believe It or Not! company opened a new attraction in Niagara Falls this summer, and has just broken ground on another site in Panama City Beach, Fla.

Ripley's opened Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum in Niagara Falls in June. (Louis was a nephew of the more famous Madame Tussaud, whose name lives on in a separate collection of wax museums not affiliated with Ripley's.) Other Louis Tussaud houses of wax can be found in Copenhagen and in Texas, in San Antonio and Grand Prairie.

The newest museum has two floors of interactive exhibits and 130 newly created figures of celebrities and politicians. Niagara Falls is also home to a Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum and Ripley's Moving Theater. The company is planning an indoor waterpark resort there as well, scheduled to open in March.

The Florida museum will be located two blocks from the Gulf of Mexico and will be housed in an unusual three-story structure designed to look like a 1950s luxury cruise liner run aground on the beach. A pair of 75-foot-tall smokestacks and a 94-foot-high mast will loom overhead with three huge rotating propellers.

The museum, like other Believe It or Not! attractions, will contain hundreds of oddities including a shrunken head, an 11-foot-tall Eiffel Tower made from matchsticks, and a 23-foot long Lincoln Town Car covered with 23,000 gold-plated British coins valued at $1.3 million.

Ripley's owns more than 50 attractions worldwide. To find one near you, visit www.ripleys.com or call (407) 345-8010.