Once “used” by animals breathing, that percentage goes down until there is nothing beneficial to bind to the body’s hemoglobin. “You’re not very long for survival in an enclosed space,” he says. Normal air is about 20 percent oxygen. Lalley, emeritus professor of physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told mental_floss he wouldn’t recommend trying this at home. Houdini’s assistant, James Collins, called down every few minutes to inform him how much time had passed. There was also a telephone line within the device. According to Mullin, the casket was wired with a buzzer he could press in case he felt imminent death. Houdini’s reputation was at stake, but he made an effort to ensure that his life wasn’t. He entered a metal casket, which his assistants lowered into a swimming pool. On August 5, 1926, Houdini performed the stunt in front of journalists at the Hotel Shelton in New York. Once again, Houdini managed 70 minutes before giving the signal to be let out. This time, the glass case was lowered into a pool of water. He feared, however, that some air may have seeped in, so he made a second practice attempt. On the first practice run, he spent one hour and 10 minutes in it, emerging sweaty and gasping. His assistants built a glass case, one that would allow Houdini to give a visual cue if he was about suffocate. Bey directly challenged Houdini to replicate the stunt.Īccording to Harry Houdini: Death-Defying Showman by Rita Thievon Mullin, Houdini practiced for weeks to regulate his breathing, taking shallow breaths in the hopes of conserving oxygen within an airtight container.

After an hour, assistants pulled him out, alive. Bey was enclosed in a metal box, which was submerged in a swimming pool in New York’s Dalton Hotel. In July of that year, magician Rahman Bey performed a stunt that rivaled any of Houdini’s. But for arguably his greatest trick, one he performed at the age of 52 just months before he died, Houdini had to master his own physiology. The magician’s seemingly never-ending tricks were usually sleight-of-hand, the result of hidden features in his props, or exploitations of the weaknesses of his restraints. By 1926, the year he died, Harry Houdini had made an elephant disappear, walked out of a brick wall assistants had built around him, regurgitated needles and blades, swam out of a nailed-shut box into which he'd been shackled and thrown into the East River, and escaped countless handcuffs and straitjackets (often while hanging upside-down).

Houdini death