The Great Escape Artist: 15 Fascinating Facts About Harry Houdini

1. He was born in Budapest, not Wisconsin.

Houdini was born Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. In 1878, his family emigrated to the United States and settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father, Mayer Samuel Weisz, became a rabbi. Houdini later liked to claim that he had been born in Appleton.

2. He borrowed his stage name from a French magician.

As a teenager, he read the memoirs of the celebrated French illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and idolized him. He added an "i" to his hero's name, believing it meant "like Houdin." The first name Harry came from his childhood nickname, "Ehrie." He later turned against Robert-Houdin and even wrote a book attacking his reputation.

3. His first performance was on a trapeze.

At around the age of nine, young Ehrich made his debut as a trapeze artist in a local circus, billing himself as "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air." To help support his struggling family, he also worked as a newspaper boy, a shoeshine boy and later as a necktie cutter in New York City.

4. His wife was also his stage partner.

In 1894, Houdini married Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" Rahner, a young performer he met in Coney Island. Bess joined his act, and together they performed "Metamorphosis," a trick in which Houdini was locked inside a trunk and, within seconds, swapped places with Bess. They remained married until his death.

5. Handcuffs made him a star.

For years, Houdini struggled in dime museums and sideshows. In 1899, theater manager Martin Beck saw him perform and advised him to focus on escapes. Houdini began challenging local police to lock him in their handcuffs and jail cells. His escapes made headlines, first in America and then across Europe.

6. One handcuff challenge took more than an hour.

In 1904, London's Daily Illustrated Mirror challenged Houdini to escape from a special pair of handcuffs that a locksmith had reportedly spent five years making. In front of about 4,000 spectators at the London Hippodrome, Houdini struggled for more than an hour before finally emerging free. Historians still debate whether the challenge was staged as a publicity stunt.

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7. His most famous escape involved hanging upside down underwater.

In 1912, Houdini introduced the Chinese Water Torture Cell. His feet were locked in stocks, and he was lowered upside down into a glass-fronted tank filled with water. A curtain was then drawn, and he escaped within a few minutes. The illusion became his signature act and was never fully explained during his lifetime.

8. He made an elephant disappear.

In 1918, at New York's enormous Hippodrome theater, Houdini made a 10,000-pound elephant named Jennie vanish from a large cabinet on stage. Because of the theater's size and layout, many in the audience could not see clearly what was happening, but the stunt became one of his most talked-about illusions.

9. He was a pioneer aviator.

Houdini bought a French Voisin biplane in 1909 and learned to fly it. On March 18, 1910, he made a series of flights at Diggers Rest near Melbourne. He is often credited with the first controlled powered flight in Australia, although historians disagree because another aviator may have flown there a few months earlier.

10. He became a movie star.

Houdini starred in several silent films, including The Grim Game (1919) and Terror Island (1920), which showcased his escapes and daring stunts. He even founded his own film company. His movies were not big box-office hits, and he eventually returned his focus to live performance.

11. He spent his last years exposing fake psychics.

After his beloved mother died in 1913, Houdini visited spiritualist mediums hoping to contact her, but he found only tricks he recognized from his own profession. He became a crusader against fraudulent psychics, attended séances in disguise and even testified before Congress in 1926 in support of a bill to ban fortune-telling for money in Washington, D.C.

12. A séance ended his friendship with Sherlock Holmes's creator.

Houdini was friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a devoted spiritualist. In 1922, Doyle's wife held a séance in Atlantic City and produced pages of "automatic writing" supposedly from Houdini's mother. Houdini was unconvinced: the message was in English, a language his mother barely spoke, and it began with a Christian cross, although she was Jewish. The friendship soon turned into a bitter public feud.

13. He died on Halloween.

In October 1926, a McGill University student in Montreal named J. Gordon Whitehead punched Houdini in the stomach several times before he could brace himself. Houdini, who was already suffering from appendicitis, performed in pain for days. He died of peritonitis in Detroit on October 31, 1926, at the age of 52. Doctors still debate whether the punches played a role.

14. He was buried in a casket from one of his own stunts.

Just months before his death, Houdini stayed sealed inside a bronze coffin submerged in a hotel swimming pool in New York for about 90 minutes, to show that people could survive on a limited supply of air. That same casket was later used for his burial at Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York.

15. His wife held séances for him every Halloween for 10 years.

Houdini and Bess agreed on a secret coded message, based on the phrase "Rosabelle, believe," so that he could prove it was really him if he managed to contact her from beyond the grave. Bess held a séance every Halloween for a decade. After the last official one, on a Hollywood rooftop in 1936, she reportedly said that ten years was long enough to wait for any man. Magicians still hold Houdini séances every Halloween.