137th birthday commemoration for Houdini

In commemoration of today’s 137th birthday of legendary magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, Historic City News notes that our search partner, Google, Inc., has chosen to remember this legend with a special “Google Doodle” on most home pages today.

In a bizarre twist of fate on the day that would have been Harry Houdini’s 137th birthday, Historic City News has also learned that Dorothy Young, an accomplished dancer and the last surviving stage assistant of the legendary illusionist, has died at 103.

The Google logo shows off a representation of Houdini being handcuffed before he escapes.

Houdini was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary with the given name of Erik Weisz — which he would later spell Ehrich Weiss. He died on October 31, 1926 at the aged 52 in Detroit, Michigan.

Houdini was the son of a rabbi who immigrated with his family to Wisconsin in 1878.

At the beginning of his career as a sideshow trickster, he called himself the “King of Cards’, but soon turned his hand to escapology to become the “Handcuff King”. Transferring from sideshows to vaudeville in 1899 saw him attain success almost overnight. He travelled the globe; and in each city, Houdini would challenge local police to shackle him and throw him in a cell. He always managed to escape.

Some of his notable escape acts include:

-Mirror handcuff challenge
-Milk Can Escape
-Chinese Water Torture Cell
-Suspended straitjacket escape
-Overboard box escape
-Buried Alive stunt

As his fame grew, he started performing a string of other stunts, including his notorious trick of struggling out of a straitjacket whilst swinging from a rope in full view of the audience. He also astonished audiences at the New York Hippodrome by vanishing away from the stage an elephant, together with its keeper.

He died rather poignantly after a final trick went wrong.

J. Gordon Whitehead, a student of Houdini, was encouraged to hit him in the abdomen; claiming he could endure any blows above the waist without getting hurt.

However, Houdini was suffering from appendicitis, which he’d refused to have treated and the punches ruptured the diseased organ, leading to fatal peritonitis.

No autopsy was ever performed; some claimed his death was somehow staged while others claimed that he was murdered.