His real name was Erik Weiss and he was the most famous escapologist of all time. He could escape from locked handcuffs, straitjackets, even sealed, underwater boxes.
In his later years Houdini campaigned against mind readers, mediums, and others who claimed supernatural powers. He argued that they were charlatans who produced all of their effects through natural means and various tricks. He wrote Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924). Houdini and his wife, however, agreed to conduct an experiment in spiritualism: the first to die was to try to communicate with the survivor. His widow declared the experiment a failure before her death in 1943.
Houdini took his stage name from the name of the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, but he later wrote The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (1908), a debunking study of Houdin’s abilities. Houdini wrote the article on conjuring for the 13th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He died of peritonitis that stemmed from a stomach injury.
Credit : Britannica
Picture Credit : Google
