24th March: Houdini's birthday

Harry Houdini was born on this date in 1874. Some things you may not know about the escapologist: 

1. His given name was Erik Weisz when he was born in Budapest, although when the family moved to America they changed the spelling to Erich Weiss. Erich was "Ehrie" to his friends, which eventually evolved into "Harry".
2. His father was a rabbi.
3. He started performing aged 9, as a trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air".
4. Houdini had a number of other strings to his bow. He was a champion cross country runner in his youth; an author - he published a book in 1908 called The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, in which he debunked the claims of his former idol Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin; he was almost a film star: he was offered the part of Captain Nemo in a silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the film was never made. He was also an aviator: he bought himself a biplane and after a successful flight in Germany, took the plane to Australia with the intent of becoming the first person to fly in the Southern Hemisphere. Some claim that indeed he was, after three successful flights near Melbourne - but others say the accolade really belongs to one Colin Defries, a Londoner, who flew at Victoria Park Racecourse, Sydney a few months earlier.
5. He began performing magic at 17, concentrating on card tricks, calling himself the "King of Cards". However, he wasn't amazingly successful. In around 1899 he started doing escapes from Handcuffs as well, which impressed his future manager, Martin Beck. Beck suggested to Houdini that escape acts were the way to go for him, and before too long he was on national and international tours as as "The Handcuff King."
6. A favourite stunt was to ask the police force of whichever city he was in to handcuff him and lock him in a cell, from which he would escape. His escapes included escaping from Scotland Yard and from a Siberian prison van. In Cologne, a police officer accused him of using bribery to make the escapes. Houdini successfully sued him and used the money to buy his mother a dress that had been made for Queen Victoria. He was nearly beaten once, in a challenge by the Daily Mirror in 1904, to escape from some specially made handcuffs. It took him almost an hour, and it was said that he asked his wife for help. She went onto the stage to give him a kiss, and possibly passed a key to him by mouth during the kiss. Another theory is that she smuggled the key to him in a glass of water. Yet another is that his struggle to escape was all part of the act.
7. He is also famous for escaping from straitjackets and sealed boxes underwater. He would sometimes ask the audience for suggestions as to what he might escape from, which led to him escaping from the belly of a beached whale and a barrel full of beer. He was buried alive three times (the coffin he used in that show was the one he was buried in after he died); and on one occasion he made a fully grown elephant and its trainer vanish from the stage of the Hippodrome Theatre in New York.
8. As President of the Society of American Magicians for a record nine years, he travelled widely, encouraging small, local magic societies to affiliate, creating the largest and longest surviving magic society in the world, which now has over 6,000 members.
9. In his later years, he was a fore-runner of James Randi, offering cash prizes to psychics and mediums if they could prove their powers were real. The prize was never claimed. Houdini felt so strongly that mediums were all frauds that he would go to seances in disguise with a reporter and a police officer for the purpose of exposing them. This cost him friendships - he fell out with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over this and the two former friends became enemies. He declared to his wife that if there was an afterlife, he would come through to her with an agreed secret message after his death. For ten years, Bess Houdini attended seances to no avail and then gave up, saying, "ten years is long enough to wait for any man." However, magicians around the world still continue a tradition of holding seances for Houdini, a fact that no doubt has him turning in his grave!
10. Houdini died of a ruptured appendix on Halloween in 1926. He had challenged a young man to punch him in the stomach, which noticeably caused him pain. Houdini claimed he wasn't ready for the punch and also that he was disadvantaged by having a broken ankle at the time. He went on to perform that night but was later taken ill, and died six days later at just 52. His last words were "I'm tired of fighting."