Today, instead of introducing magic, I would like to introduce a magician who is familiar in Europe and the United States, who is also an internationally renowned escapist artist, that is, the famous Harry Houdini. Let's take a look at the legendary life of this great magician, Houdini was born in 1874 in a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, because of the poverty of the family, Harry Houdini from the age of twelve, has done countless work, has a lot of social experience.
Until one time watching the parade magician Lynn's cutting magic show, after cutting the female assistant lying in the box with a wood saw, the magician also invited Houdini to help him show the cutting effect, and it was this time that he inadvertently had to assist in the performance, opening the door to the magic world for the young Houdini. And the same Houdini himself has a high talent for magic, often through magic performances to subsidize the family, and also practiced the skills of being able to use all the gadgets to unlock various locks, and has since embarked on the road of magic performance.
At first, Houdini was not famous, just an unknown magician, but the opportunity was always left to those who were prepared, once when he and his girlfriend were at a local entertainment venue, preparing to perform a magic show to escape in a wooden box. However, he was harassed by a policeman present, and asked him to perform escape techniques with police handcuffs. However, Houdini was not embarrassed, pulled out the hidden tools on the belt, and it did not take long to successfully open the real handcuffs, which also won the applause of everyone present, and also made Houdini's escape magic famous.
Since then, Houdini has focused on performing various escape techniques, performing one after another in various places.
In order to further enhance his popularity, Houdini even challenged himself to be tied up and locked into the prison of the police station to perform escape techniques, and let the newspaper reporters make a big report, resulting in Houdini escaping from the prison with a hidden prosthetic finger inside the tool.
In 1913, he performed the most famous stage magic trick, the water cell escape. On the stage, Harry Houdini's hands and feet were all tied by ropes and hung upside down in a tank made of transparent glass and steel, which was full of water. It is already difficult for a person to get out of being tied up all over his body, and how can he get out quickly while holding his breath? The audience was nervous and scared, and they all worried about Harry Houdini's life, but after 3 minutes, Houdini managed to escape from the water prison in full view of everyone.
Since then, Harry Houdini has gained fame. In Berlin in 1950, a magic show was performed for the then Kaiser. Houdini first performed his classic magic trick, swallowing a pile of needles and a string into his mouth, and then pulling out of his mouth the string, and the needle was already worn on the string, but did not mention the Emperor's interest. To alleviate the embarrassment, Houdini had to take the risk of performing a new magic tooth pick-up that had just been completed. Houdini brought in a lieutenant colonel and had his assistant bring an old-fashioned rifle, and the lieutenant colonel fired the first shot, which hit the bullseye to test the authenticity of the rifle.
Then the assistant began to reload for the second time, Houdini explained on the side, first added a certain amount of gunpowder, then the ball of paper, and finally the warhead, Houdini deliberately let the German Emperor and the Lieutenant Colonel carefully examine the warhead, and then handed it to the assistant to push the warhead into the chamber, and handed the rifle to the Lieutenant Colonel again, and Houdini himself stood in the bull's eye, signaling the Lieutenant Colonel to shoot again, the Lieutenant Colonel finally pulled the trigger at the Emperor's suggestion after some entanglement, and The shot Hudini just shook his head, and then went straight to the front of the stage. He spat out the bullet in his mouth, thus completely conquering everyone present.
In fact, the secret is very simple, the secret is in the assistant's push rod, it is installed on the top of a magnet, the assistant will push the bullet into the chamber, and then the magnet is sucked up, hidden in the palm of the hand, the rifle without the bullet, although there is a gun sound and fireworks, but will not shoot bullets.
In 1914, Houdini performed another classic magic milk can escape, although the magic was still wonderful, but because of the rise of silent films at that time, fewer and fewer people watched escape performances, and in the face of the impact of the emerging film industry on the traditional performance industry, how can we better retain the audience? This time, Houdini took inspiration from a glass of ice water at the head of the bed, and only the more intense and impactful escape technique could attract the audience, so he immediately asked his assistant to find a large number of ice cubes and experimented.
And this time the performance venue chose to be on a frozen bridge, in the cold wind, Houdini wearing a swimsuit, full of chains, and was handcuffed, in the face of the crowd and close to the audience, Hunidi enjoyed this moment of being noticed by everyone, and then he jumped at the head of the bridge, so he fell into the thick ice under the bridge, the ice hole that was chiseled out in advance, the red Nidi after falling into the water, quickly uncuffed, broke free of the chain, but he lost his way under the water. Unable to find the opening of the hole on the ice, and in this trance, Houdini vaguely saw his mother waving at him underwater, thus successfully finding the opening of the cave and completing the magic, through this magic, once again proved that he was the king of escape, worthy of the name, returned to the public's vision, and the performance became often full.
However, as Houdini's escape technique becomes more and more dangerous, while bringing freshness and excitement to the audience, it also seriously arouses his wife's deep concern for him, and this worry even escalates to an argument. Until he performed another thrilling magic shackles escape technique, this time the performance, Houdini upgraded the restraints from the traditional chains and handcuffs to the restraints specially used to bind the mentally ill, on the day of the performance, Houdini wore a restraint suit, and was hung upside down, hanging in mid-air, and finally Houdini dislocated his arm and successfully broke free from the restraint. After the performance, in the face of his wife's persuasion, Houdini only wanted to get more attention and more thrilling performances, putting his life and death aside, while his wife cared about Hudini's safety, and finally let the emotional crisis between the two completely erupt.
And the calmed foxni, recalling the mutual help and support between the two from obscurity, finally realized his wife's deep love for him, compromised with his wife, and vowed not to risk performing dangerous escape techniques, which also completed The magic that Woodini rarely did not escape from the side - the elephant that disappeared out of thin air. This time Houdini specially invited his mother and wife, and solemnly introduced the two on the spot, and then invited the protagonist of this magician, an adult elephant, Houdini climbed on the elephant, sat on the back of the elephant, and then a number of assistants jointly lifted the giant red curtain, slowly covered the elephant and Houdini, as the curtain slowly fell, the elephant weighing several tons disappeared in an instant in front of everyone, and this performance once again won the warm applause of the audience. He also used this to express his wife and mother's determination not to risk performing again.
With the re-popularity of Houdini, with the efforts of all parties, Houdini, who had unlimited scenery for a while, once again began his European magic tour. In this tour, an early version of the wall piercing technique was performed, crossing the scene under the eyes of everyone, a solid brick wall that had just been built, and as the music sounded, Houdini immediately began to perform, and as the screen closed and opened, Houdini on one side of the brick wall came to the other side almost instantaneously.
The secret of the crossing is that under the built wall, there is a secret door controlled by an assistant, when the screen blocks the view of the audience, the assistant opens the secret door, Andi Houdini uses the space formed by the carpet to quickly pass through the brick wall from below, to the other side and quickly pose, and the assistant restores the secret door to its original state. The carpet, which was supposed to prevent magicians from manipulating their hands and feet, was used by Houdini to turn into props that passed under the wall.
The wonderful performance won the praise of the audience, even the famous detective novelist Conan, Doyle also praised his performance, but even believed that he had supernatural powers, But Houdini always insisted that he was just a magician who used magic.
Houdini, who had not yet had time to celebrate, immediately followed by a bad news, which can be said to have given him a head-on blow, and even changed the entire second half of Houdini's life, that is, the unfortunate death of his mother in the United States, the heartbroken Houdini, and even hoped to meet his mother again through the popular psychic at that time, in order to comfort the longing for his mother.
But every psychic ceremony is only a flawed one for a magician who has been practicing for thousands of years, and the scam created through simple magic tricks, the sad and indignant Houdini even rewards the psychic medium who can truly achieve psychic psychic through newspapers and other media means, or the scam that can deceive himself, which is more appropriate.
During this period, Houdini, again, began his escape show, and this time, he wanted to challenge the artillery that was absolutely lethal at the time, Houdini's hands were fixed in front of the cannon's muzzle, and his assistant lit the cannon's fuse, after some intense operation, Houdini finally escaped before the shell was fired, thus avoiding being crushed to pieces by solid shells.
However, even the top psychic medium at that time was exposed by Houdini on the spot, defeated, and even the psychic medium wanted to make Houdini change his mouth through seduction, but Houdini was not moved, as Houdini announced the psychic deception to the public, thus also being hated by the entire psychic community, which also laid the groundwork for Houdini's accidental death.
Fast forward to 1926, when Houdini was attacked by an avid proponent of psychic without any preparation before performing a water prison escape show, slamming into his abdomen, causing his already inflamed appendix to rupture.
It was precisely because the pain caused by the blow may have obscured the pain of cecalitis, which in turn led to a delay in medical treatment, and finally the infection caused by appendicitis fell on the stage of the performance.
Houdini's funeral was held in New York on November 4 of the same year, with more than 2,000 mourners present. He was buried at Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, with the medallion of honor of the American Society of Magicians carved on the tombstone. The society still performs the "Broken Wand" ceremony at his graveyard on his death day.
Throughout Houdini's life, he was not only a highly accomplished magician, but also a world-renowned escape master, and even people often refer to that era as the Hunedi era. Not only that, but according to the research of modern scholars, Hunidi also used the british and American double-sided spies to take advantage of the convenience of touring the world in individual stocks, as well as his superb escape methods, to help complete many intelligence collection work, and made his own contribution to the victory of the First World War.
Third, Houdini was also the first person to expose the deception of psychics and their psychics, and through newspapers, books and broadcasts, etc., let the ordinary people at that time realize the ugly face of psychic media.
Even before his death, he agreed with his wife that after his death, the two of them would continue to verify whether the psychic medium really had the ability to channel through a pre-agreed code, and even after death, they gave the psychic trick of the psychic medium a heavy blow.