Harry Houdini Died 100 Years Ago This Halloween: Was He Really Killed by a Punch to the Stomach?
This Halloween marks the 100th anniversary of the death of famed escape artist Harry Houdini. Today, most of us know more about the manner of that death than we do about any of the feats of escape artistry that made him famous in the first place. As the story goes, he’d mastered his own body to the extent that he could tighten his abdominal muscles so as to withstand even the hardest punch to the gut. Or at least that’s the image he let circulate: taking it as a challenge, a student and amateur boxer turned up and offered his fist to Houdini as an unexpected test. A week and a half later, the…
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