Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926), born Erik Weisz, was an American escapologist, illusionist and stunt performer remembered for his daring escape acts.

He was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary, and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1878. They first lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as a rabbi, and in 1887 he moved with his father to New York. He worked several jobs as a child and made his first public appearance as a nine-year-old trapeze artist.

He became a professional magician in 1891, taking the name "Harry Houdini" after the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, though success was slow to come. He married fellow performer Bess, who served as his stage assistant for the rest of his career. In 1899 manager Martin Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit; he then toured Europe as Harry "Handcuff" Houdini, challenging police forces to keep him locked up. In 1904 thousands watched in suspense for about an hour as he attempted to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's Daily Mirror. His repertoire grew to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, the water-filled Milk Can Escape introduced in 1908, and, from 1912, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he escaped while suspended upside down in a tank of water.

In the 1920s he devoted himself to exposing fraudulent mediums, which ended his friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism; he also served for many years as president of the Society of American Magicians. He made several films but gave up acting when it failed to bring in money, and as a keen aviator he made one of the first powered aeroplane flights in Australia in 1910.

In October 1926 he already had a high fever when he gave his last performance in Detroit, and he died of peritonitis in a hospital there on October 31, aged 52; his death was possibly related to appendicitis and to punches to his abdomen he had received about a week and a half earlier.