October 31
HOUDINI DAY
This is the day to keep some tricks up your sleeve, much like the famous magician, illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini.
Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss), the greatest escape artist in history, always managed to find his way out of handcuffs, straitjackets, padlocked boxes, even a Scotland Yard jail cell. He could walk through walls, make an elephant disappear, and escape from the Water Torture Cell (suspended headfirst into a tank of water with his ankles locked in stocks). However, Harry Houdini was unable to escape fate.
His fatal destiny began on October 22, 1926 while Houdini was performing at the Princess Theater in Montreal, Canada. As he relaxed on a couch in his dressing room at the theater, Houdini was visited by a student athlete from Montreal’s McGill University. The young man asked Houdini if it was true that he could actually withstand punches to the stomach. Houdini replied in the affirmative, but before he could prepare himself for the stunt by tightening his stomach muscles, the student punched the magician several times in his mid-section.
Houdini performed that night and several more, then headed for Detroit where he did one show, then collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. At the time, it was assumed that his appendix had been ruptured by the blows from the student. Current medical knowledge leads experts to believe that Houdini already had appendicitis and only thought that the blows to his stomach were the cause of his pain.
Harry Houdini died on this day in 1926, of peritonitis. Magicians and mediums throughout the world still gather on this night, Halloween, to honor the Great Houdini.
Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve), an ancient celebration dating back to the sixth or seventh centuries, is a rather fitting time for this memorial celebration. Harry Houdini was not only a magician but one who devoted much of his time to exposing fake mediums (in fact, he was not only performing in Montreal at the time of his death, but was also in the city as a guest lecturer at McGill University. The subject of his lecture: Exposing spiritualism.) His spirit still lives on this, the holiday which combines the Druid autumn festival and the Christian celebration of Hallowtide, long associated with witches, ghosts, devils, spirits, magic ... and all scary things that go bump in the night.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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