Word: houdini
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Arthur Conan Doyle, famed believer in spiritualism, last week conducted a little dispute. "Prof." Thurston had said Sir Arthur was easy to fool. Sir Arthur wrote back: "Apparently he [Mr. Thurston] thinks it easy to fool his audience, but he certainly never fooled me." Mr. Thurston eagerly replied : "Harry Houdini had himself locked in a box on the stage, a canopy was thrown over the box and Houdini appeared outside. Sir Arthur made the remark that in the presence and hearing of about 300 magicians that Houdini had disintegrated his body, slipped through the keyhole or some cracks and then...
...sermons from high finance, high politics, or high poetics, are stodgy, or sentimental, or pluto-patriotic, or even cheap pamphleteering. Mr. McAdoo, for instance, has taken advantage of his position as commencement orator to wave the black flag of the Anti-Saloon League and then attempt to pull a Houdini on his audience by telling them it is identical with the American flag. Such political truckstering is hardly a pleasant foretaste for the graduating Senior...
Toto, who weighs 118 pounds and can enclose himself in a two foot cube, is generally thought to be double-jointed. Disparaging this rumor, Toto said, "There is no such thing as being double-jointed. Every trick I perform is made possible through practice. Houdini was not a contortionist; he was a trickster. Each of his acts were done by subtility, and not by muscular coordination. Anyone can double himself into a small space if he will only practice...
TIME stated that the late Houdini was the son of Rabbi Weiss. When I ventured forth with this information I was ridiculed...
...late Harry Houdini was indeed born to the name of Weiss. The father was a scholarly rabbi (TIME, Nov. 24, 1924). But let not scholarly Rabbi Weiss be confused with famed Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of Manhattan...