Columnist, Radio Pioneer Doug Storer, 86, Dies

CLEARWATER, Fla. —  Doug Storer, author of the newspaper column “Amazing But True” and a pioneer in radio broadcasting, died at a hospital here of congestive heart failure Wednesday. He was 86.

Storer was the author of more than 20 Amazing But True books, hundreds of newspaper columns and cartoons and radio and television specials. Three years ago he published his 21st book, a 454-page “Encyclopedia of Amazing But True Facts.”

He was with a New York advertising agency in the 1930s when he teamed with Capt. Tim Healy, an Australian veteran of World War I who told stories about the origins of postage stamps.

Storer booked time on small radio stations in New England and launched the “Ivory Stamp Club of the Air,” on which he would exhort children to use Ivory soap and send in wrappers and pennies to buy stamps.

Earlier he adapted Robert L. Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” for national radio.