Harry Houdini was born in Hungary in 1874.\u00a0 His poor family moved to Wisconsin but Harry (Enrich Weiss was his real name) ran away to Texas, but got the wrong train and went to Missouri at the age of twelve.\u00a0\u00a0 After a few years of working odd jobs, he moved to New York City, and lived with his family, where he began to develop an interest in Magic.\u00a0 He became a messenger when he was a teenager, and later worked in a factory where he met a boy named Jake, and after reading a magic book that changed his life.\u00a0 They left the factory, started a magic show and they called themselves, the Modern Monarchs of Mystery.<\/p>\n
They toured around dime museums and fairs in the Northwest, but Jake left after sometime, and Harry\u2019s real brother Theo joined the act.\u00a0 The performed the usual magic tricks until they did the grand finale, the \u201cMetamorphis\u201d.\u00a0 It was trunk in which Theo would be put in in a bag, that was tied, and then the trunk was closed, and tied.\u00a0 A curtain was put around the trunk, and after Harry Houdini clapped his hands three times in a row, the curtain was taken down, and Theo was standing there and the trunk was still tied and locked!\u00a0 When it was opened, Harry was inside the bag which was tied!\u00a0 Theo was part of the act, until he was replaced by Bess, who he had met pursued and married.<\/p>\n
In 1899, Harry Houdini got a manager, and his name was Martin Beck, a star maker.\u00a0 Instead of being paid $25 a week, he was being paid $60, and eventually $250 a week!\u00a0 Under Beck, he dropped his other tricks and focused on his handcuff escapes.\u00a0 Beck also taught Houdini that less is more, meaning fewer acts that are bigger and more exciting were better than more tricks that were smaller and the usual tricks.\u00a0 Houdini, however, got tired of Beck\u2019s managing.\u00a0 He still went on the trip to Europe Beck had booked for him, even though he had quit Beck\u2019s management earlier.\u00a0 In Europe he met Harry Day, who became his new manager.<\/p>\n
Houdini became very famous in Europe.\u00a0 Before each show, he would escape from the best jail in the country to promote his show.\u00a0 His most famous jail escape was when he escaped from London Yard in seconds.\u00a0 His manager was walking out of the jail when he called for him to wait for he had already escaped. He also was made famous when he escaped from a Siberian Transport Cell.\u00a0 While in Europe, he became interested in straitjacket escapes, when a doctor invited him to see an insane asylum.\u00a0 He escaped a straitjacket, by dislocating his shoulder.<\/p>\n
Harry was married to his wife Bess for 32 years, but they never had any children to their dismay.\u00a0 Houdini had four brothers, and he was very devoted to his mother.\u00a0 He was so devoted to her that he bought her Queen Victoria\u2019s dress she never wore, because she died.\u00a0 This dress cost $150; that\u2019s $3000 today!\u00a0 Later on, he joined the Society of American Magicians, and later was made its president until his death.<\/p>\n
He tried to meet with other old magicians that he admired, on died two hours before they were to meet.\u00a0 Unlike in Europe where he escaped jails to promote his shows, he promoted his shows differently in America.\u00a0 He promoted them by jumping into rivers handcuffed or handcuffed in a box that was tied.\u00a0 Houdini was also interested in flying.<\/p>\n
He became the first to successfully fly in Australia, but it was oddly the last time he ever flew.<\/p>\n
Houdini later became famous for his water torture cell, where he hung upside down in and had to reach up and unlock his handcuffs on his feet and lift the top off.\u00a0 He became even more famous when he made an elephant disappear at Barnum\u2019s circus, and he did it by having Jenny, the elephant walk in to a supersize ghost house.\u00a0 Houdini also added to his fame when he played in movies in which he actually did his escapes.<\/p>\n
Houdini\u2019s tricks became more difficult\u2026 and dangerous.\u00a0 He was once buried an alive and admitted he would never do it again.\u00a0 Rahman Bey, an Egyptian magician, proposed a challenge.\u00a0 The challenge was to stay underwater for more than 49 minutes, the amount he had stayed under for.\u00a0 Houdini did it for 1 hour, and 31 minutes!<\/p>\n
Houdini quit the show business for a while after his mother died, whom he was devoted to.\u00a0 He tried to make contact with the spirit world, through mediums, who conducted s\u00e9ances, where the spirits were supposed to write directly on tablets.\u00a0 Houdini eventually revealed that all mediums where fake.<\/p>\n
In 1926, on Halloween, he conducted a lecture on exposing spiritualism, when three students came to him after the lecture.\u00a0 They asked him that it was true that he could take three blows to the stomach and not be harmed and he said yes.\u00a0 He was going through his mail, so when one student asked if he could try it he absentmindedly said yes.\u00a0 The young, strong student, delivered three blows, and he didn\u2019t have time to tithing his stomach muscles.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know it but this had blown his appendix.\u00a0 Disease set in and he died ten days later.\u00a0 He is dead but not forgotten. Ask someone what the most famous magician is and Harry Houdini still tops the list.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Harry Houdini was born in Hungary in 1874.\u00a0 His poor family moved to Wisconsin but Harry (Enrich Weiss was his real name) ran away to Texas, but got the wrong train and went to Missouri at the age of twelve.\u00a0\u00a0 After a few years of working odd jobs, he moved to New York City, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32,21,22],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-biographies","tag-book-reports","tag-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}