109 Fun Facts About Magic

In which Canadian city did a student punch Houdini in the stomach, days before his death in 1926?

Montreal: McGill student J. Gordon Whitehead struck him in his dressing room. Houdini performed on in pain and died days later in Detroit of a ruptured appendix, though whether the blows caused it is still debated.

In which city was Houdini born?

Budapest, though as a star Houdini claimed he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his family settled when he was four; his Hungarian birth was not made public until after his death.

What escape did Houdini introduce at the Circus Busch in Berlin in 1912?

The Chinese Water Torture Cell replaced his Milk Can act, which too many imitators had copied: with his ankles locked in stocks, he was lowered head-first into a glass-fronted tank of water.

Which London newspaper challenged Houdini in 1904 with handcuffs said to have taken five years to make?

The Daily Mirror said a Birmingham locksmith had spent five years on the cuffs. Houdini fought for over an hour before the crowd carried him off in triumph, though biographers suspect he arranged the challenge himself.

Houdini is often credited as the first person to do what in Australia, in 1910?

Fly a powered aircraft: he coaxed a French Voisin biplane into three short flights at Diggers Rest, Victoria, though a brief hop by Colin Defries months earlier has a rival claim to the record.

Which animal did Houdini famously make vanish on stage at the New York Hippodrome in 1918?

An elephant named Jennie walked into a huge cabinet and was gone when it was opened. Houdini had the method from British inventor Charles Morritt, who adapted it from his own disappearing donkey.

Houdini died in a Detroit hospital in 1926 on which holiday?

Halloween. He died on October 31, 1926, of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix; his widow Bess tried to reach him at a seance on each anniversary for ten years, then gave up.

What secret code did Houdini agree with his wife Bess to prove communication from beyond the grave?

'Rosabelle believe' drew on a song Bess sang in her act when they met. A medium claimed to deliver the code in 1929, but Bess later said the sitting was faked and ended her yearly seances in 1936.

Houdini's crusade against fake mediums cost him his friendship with which famous author?

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the coldly logical Sherlock Holmes, was a leading spiritualist. The rift opened in 1922, when his wife claimed at a seance to reach Houdini's dead mother and Houdini was not convinced.

Houdini served as president of which organisation from 1917 until his death?

The Society of American Magicians grew from a New York club into a national network under Houdini. A bust on his grave in Queens was smashed or stolen four times before the society gave up replacing it.

Which train gave its name to the 1991 TV special in which David Copperfield made a railway carriage vanish?

The Orient Express. In 'Mystery on the Orient Express' the carriage did not simply disappear: Copperfield first made it float into the air, and it vanished there.

Which monument did David Copperfield make disappear on live television in April 1983?

The Statue of Liberty: he raised a curtain before tourists seated on Liberty Island and lowered it on empty sky, then told viewers he wanted them to imagine a world without liberty.

Which famous structure did Copperfield appear to walk through in 1986?

The Great Wall of China: Copperfield staged such one-off landmark stunts to draw viewers to his annual TV specials, and followed this one a year later with an escape from Alcatraz.

In Copperfield's Death Saw illusion, who ends up strapped beneath the descending blade?

The magician himself: the illusion is staged as an escape gone wrong, in which a giant rotary blade comes down before Copperfield can free himself and seems to cut him in two.

Copperfield owns Musha Cay, a private island resort in which country?

The Bahamas: he bought Musha Cay and its neighbouring islands in 2006, renamed them the Islands of Copperfield Bay, and claimed that one of them hides the fountain of youth.

Over which natural landmark did David Copperfield appear to fly in a 1984 TV special?

The Grand Canyon. That flight was made for television, but by 1992 he was flying live on stage, with hoops passed around him to rule out wires and a volunteer carried in his arms.

Which supermodel was engaged to Copperfield in the 1990s and appeared in his act?

Claudia Schiffer met him in 1993 when he picked her out of the audience at a Berlin show. Paris Match later called the romance a paid publicity stunt, and the couple sued the magazine.

David Copperfield founded Project Magic in 1982 to teach sleight of hand to whom?

Hospital patients: therapists use the tricks as physical therapy, because practising sleight of hand rebuilds dexterity in hands weakened by injury or illness.

Copperfield's magic secrets were etched in nickel on an archive that crash-landed where in 2019?

The Moon: the secrets rode in the Arch Mission Foundation's 'lunar library' aboard Israel's Beresheet lander, which crashed on its descent, though the near-indestructible discs may have survived.

Penn and Teller first performed together in 1975 at what kind of event?

A Renaissance festival in Minnesota, on August 19, 1975. The duo began as a trio: with Weir Chrisemer, who had introduced them, they toured as the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society until 1981.

At which Las Vegas hotel have Penn & Teller performed since 2001?

They are the longest-running headliners at the same hotel in Las Vegas history.

Which card do Penn & Teller force on spectators in nearly all their card tricks?

The Three of Clubs keeps turning up for a practical reason: the pair say they chose it mainly because it is a card that can be read easily on a television camera.

What was the name of Penn & Teller's Showtime series that debunked psychics and pseudoscience?

Bullshit! was a title chosen with lawyers in mind: Penn told viewers that calling people liars and quacks could get the show sued, while that word, oddly, was legally safe.

Which How I Met Your Mother star took over as host of Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2016?

Alyson Hannigan succeeded Jonathan Ross. The show began on Britain's ITV in 2011 and was cancelled after one series, until reruns did well enough on The CW for the American network to revive it.

Besides a trophy, what do magicians who fool Penn & Teller on Fool Us win?

A slot in their Las Vegas show: anyone whose trick the pair cannot work out is flown out to perform as their opening act. The trophy was only added from the second season.

Blaine's breakthrough 1997 TV special was subtitled what?

Street Magic had no stage, sequins or big props, just a deck of cards and a handful of quarters: Blaine said he wanted to bring magic back to where it was 100 years ago, among people on the street.

Where was David Blaine suspended in a Plexiglas box for 44 days in 2003?

Beside the River Thames in London, where he went 44 days without food. Hecklers jeered, pelted the box with eggs and at one point even cut off his water supply.

On which talk show did David Blaine hold his breath for a record 17 minutes in 2008?

The Oprah Winfrey Show: Blaine breathed pure oxygen for 23 minutes to saturate his blood, then stayed under in a water tank for 17 minutes 4 seconds, beating the record by half a minute.

In his 2020 stunt Ascension, what lifted David Blaine high above the Arizona desert?

Helium balloons: Blaine had planned to drift across the Hudson River into New York, but moved the stunt to Page, Arizona, where he let go miles up and parachuted back down.

Blaine's 2002 stunt Vertigo had him stand for 35 hours on top of what?

A pillar in Bryant Park, just 22 inches wide, with no harness. At the 35-hour mark he jumped off onto a 12-foot pile of cardboard boxes and came away with a concussion.

Siegfried & Roy headlined which Las Vegas casino from 1990 until 2003?

The Mirage: Steve Wynn hired the pair to anchor his newly opened resort, and they starred there for 13 years until an on-stage accident in 2003 closed the show for good.

Which animal dragged Roy Horn off stage by the neck during a Siegfried & Roy show in 2003?

A white tiger. Roy always maintained that the cat never attacked him: he said he had suffered a stroke on stage and it was trying to carry him to safety, a version that has never been settled.

Where did future stage partners Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn first meet?

On a cruise ship, where Siegfried was a steward doing magic in the evenings and Roy a bellboy. Unimpressed by vanishing rabbits, Roy smuggled a cheetah aboard for the act instead.

The father of modern conjuring, Robert-Houdin, trained in what trade before magic?

Watchmaking. By his own account he ordered a treatise on clockmaking, was handed a two-volume set on conjuring by mistake, and kept it; the clockwork skills later drove his stage automata.

Napoleon III sent Robert-Houdin on a 'magic mission' to which territory in 1856?

Algeria. Before tribal chiefs he let a strong man lift a small chest, then made it immovable with a hidden electromagnet, to show that French magic was stronger than that of the local holy men.

Robert-Houdin's illusion in which a barren plant bloomed and bore fruit was called what?

The Marvelous Orange Tree gave real oranges, handed out to the audience, and from the last one two mechanical butterflies lifted a borrowed handkerchief; a version of it appears in the 2006 film The Illusionist.

Which classic illusion did P. T. Selbit first perform in public at a London theatre in 1921?

Sawing a woman in half caused a sensation at the Finsbury Park Empire. Within months Horace Goldin was touring a rival version in America, where he went to court to keep competitors off the stage.

Which magician was fatally shot on stage at London's Wood Green Empire in 1918 when a bullet catch went wrong?

Chung Ling Soo was really an American in costume, who had modelled his act and his name on the genuine Chinese star Ching Ling Foo; when both played London, Foo publicly called him an impostor.

Which magician-turned-skeptic offered $1 million to anyone who could prove paranormal powers under test conditions?

James Randi, 'The Amazing Randi', kept the offer open for decades: more than a thousand people applied, none passed, and it was wound up in 2015, the year he retired.

Which legendary feat does historian Peter Lamont trace to an 1890 hoax in the Chicago Tribune?

The Indian rope trick. Reporter John Wilkie wrote the tale under the byline 'Fred S. Ellmore'; the paper admitted the hoax four months later, but few noticed and the legend spread anyway.

Which Roman author wrote that the cups and balls pleased him only until he was shown how it was done?

Seneca used the trick to wave away philosophers' word-puzzles as harmless: he told a friend that the trickery itself was the pleasure, and that once shown the method he lost all interest.

Reginald Scot's 1584 book explaining conjurers' tricks was written to defend people accused of what crime?

Witchcraft. The Discoverie of Witchcraft held that the accused were mostly poor, aged and simple people, and showed how conjurers did their tricks so that such feats would not be mistaken for sorcery.

At which London venue did Maskelyne and Cooke stage magic shows for 31 years from 1873?

The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, billed as 'England's Home of Mystery'. Maskelyne had made his name by reproducing the stunts of fake spirit mediums on stage, and kept exposing them there.

Which royal earned membership of The Magic Circle in 1975 by performing the cups and balls?

Prince Charles, now King Charles III, passed the audition at the society's headquarters, and the cups he performed with are now displayed by the Circle among its prized objects.

How do visitors open the hidden door into Hollywood's Magic Castle?

By speaking to an owl sculpture: the lobby has no visible doors until the right phrase is said. The clubhouse was the idea of a TV writer who had gazed at the run-down mansion from his office window.

Which actor and lifelong magic fan served as president of the Magic Castle's board from 2011 to 2014?

Neil Patrick Harris, a keen card magician, chaired the Hollywood clubhouse through its recovery from a 2011 fire, years in which the once-struggling club's business grew sharply.

Which Canadian sleight-of-hand master, 'The Professor', held court at the Magic Castle until his death at 98?

Dai Vernon billed himself as the man who fooled Houdini, having beaten his boast that no card trick could baffle him three times running. After his death his ashes were brought back to the Castle.

Doug Henning's Broadway hit The Magic Show, which opened in 1974, had songs by which composer?

Stephen Schwartz, then 26, with Godspell and Pippin already hits. The show had begun in Toronto as Spellbound, with a script by a young David Cronenberg, before Broadway replaced its book and score.

Which 2006 film about feuding Victorian stage magicians cast David Bowie as the inventor Nikola Tesla?

The Prestige. Working magicians trained its stars: Ricky Jay, who also plays a stage conjurer in the film, and Michael Weber coached Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in stagecraft and sleight of hand.

Criss Angel's TV series Mindfreak aired on which network from 2005?

A&E ran Mindfreak for six seasons from 2005, with stunts such as walking on water. Its success led to a decade-long stage residency at the Luxor, which Angel left in 2018 for Planet Hollywood.

Card-thrower Ricky Jay could pierce the rind of which fruit with a playing card from ten paces?

A watermelon, whose rind he grandly called the 'thick pachydermatous outer melon layer'. A card he threw could reach ninety miles an hour and travel 190 feet, a feat once listed by Guinness.

Which playwright directed Ricky Jay's one-man show Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants?

David Mamet, who also put Jay on screen in House of Games. Jay's consulting firm then took his trickery to Hollywood, devising the illusion that hid Gary Sinise's legs in Forrest Gump.

Which Las Vegas magician became the first American to win the Grand Prix at FISM, magic's world championship, in 1982?

Lance Burton, a 22-year-old from Kentucky, went on to headline the Monte Carlo from 1996 to 2010, in a theatre the casino built for him and named after him.

Which close-up card magician won America's Got Talent in 2018 and its Champions edition a year later?

Shin Lim trained as a pianist until carpal tunnel syndrome struck at music school and a doctor told him to pick one pursuit to spare his hands; he chose cards, and performs in silence to music.

Which comedian worked as a teenager demonstrating tricks at a magic shop inside Disneyland?

Steve Martin. He started at ten selling guidebooks at the gate, then spent three years behind the counter of Merlin's Magic Shop in Fantasyland, where the tricks and balloon animals of his early act took shape.

The 'digit' in prestidigitation, a grand word for sleight of hand, comes from the Latin for what?

Finger, from the Latin digitus. French conjurer Jules de Rovère, a man of noble birth, coined the word because he disdained 'escamoteur', the plain French name for a conjurer.

Which movement did Doug Henning quit magic in the 1980s to promote, even planning a theme park for it?

Transcendental Meditation. Henning sold his props, drew up plans with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for a park called Veda Land near Niagara Falls, and stood for the Canadian parliament for a party that promoted yogic flying.

Which change, credited to his brother Hardeen, made Houdini's straitjacket escapes a far bigger hit?

Escaping in full view: the act was first done hidden behind a curtain, but crowds proved far more gripped by watching the struggle, and Houdini went on to do it dangling upside down from buildings.

Copperfield left Fordham University just three weeks into his first year to do what?

Star in a stage musical: at 18 he took the lead in The Magic Man in Chicago, where he sang, danced and devised most of the illusions himself.

Which magic word did a second-century physician tell fever patients to wear, written as a triangle?

Abracadabra first appears in a medical book by Serenus Sammonicus, doctor to the emperor Caracalla, who claimed the amulet made lethal diseases go away.

Which real inventor, played by David Bowie, builds a magician's machine in the film The Prestige?

Nikola Tesla really did build a laboratory in Colorado Springs in 1899, which is where the film sends Hugh Jackman's magician to find him.

Which sitcom features Gob Bluth, a bungling magician who performs to Europe's The Final Countdown?

Arrested Development makes Gob a founder of the Magicians' Alliance, a group sworn to protect secrets, which then blacklists him for revealing one in the pilot.

Which actor and amateur magician was board president of Hollywood's Magic Castle from 2011 to 2014?

Neil Patrick Harris also gave magic tricks to his characters in How I Met Your Mother and Glee, and wrote a children's book series called The Magic Misfits.

Which US agency paid magician John Mulholland during the Cold War to write a manual of trickery?

The CIA thought every copy had been destroyed in 1973, but the text resurfaced and was published as The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.

Which British royal passed the Magic Circle's entrance exam by performing the cups and balls?

Charles III was Prince of Wales when he took the test, and the club's museum still displays the set of cups and balls he used.

Which comedian took a paying job as a teenager at a magic shop inside Disneyland?

Steve Martin first sold guidebooks there and spent his free time watching tricks demonstrated at the Main Street shop, until the one in Fantasyland hired him in 1960.

New Jersey-born magician David Copperfield took his stage name from a novel by which author?

Charles Dickens's title character gave the teenage illusionist his name for no deeper reason than that he liked its sound.

Which longtime Tonight Show host debuted at 14 as a magician in Nebraska, earning $3 a show?

Johnny Carson billed himself as The Great Carsoni, two years after buying a mail-order magician's kit at the age of 12.

Which Israeli performer became famous in the 1970s for appearing to bend spoons with his mind?

Uri Geller sued Nintendo in 2000 over a spoon-carrying psychic Pokémon that he said had stolen his identity.

Which 2013 heist film follows the Four Horsemen, magicians who rob banks during their stage shows?

Now You See Me cast Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco as the quartet, who shower their audiences with the stolen money.

The illusionists Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn were both born in which European country?

Germany produced both men, Siegfried in Rosenheim, Bavaria, and Roy in Nordenham, before the pair became United States citizens in 1988.

Which hat became comedy magician Tommy Cooper's trademark after he borrowed one from a Cairo waiter?

A fez was never the plan: he had forgotten the pith helmet a sketch called for, and the swap got such huge laughs that he wore one on stage ever after.

In the con game three-card monte, which card does the dealer usually ask the mark to follow?

The queen gives the con its other name, Find the Lady, and the dealer's shills lose on purpose so that following her looks easy.

Which actor played the title role in the 2013 magician comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone?

Steve Carell plays an old-school showman who reunites with his partner, played by Steve Buscemi, to take on a dangerous rival magician played by Jim Carrey.

Where in New York did David Blaine stand inside a block of ice for more than 63 hours in 2000?

Times Square crowds saw him cut free with chainsaws short of his 72-hour goal, and he later said it took a month to recover fully.

The Mechanical Turk, a 1770 automaton with a person hidden inside, appeared to play which game?

Chess masters crouched inside and moved the pieces with levers and magnets, beating opponents as famous as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

Which pianist-turned-card magician won America's Got Talent in 2018 and then its Champions spin-off?

Shin Lim turned to magic after carpal tunnel syndrome, diagnosed when he was 20, ended his training as a pianist.

Which NBC sitcom starred real-life magician Harry Anderson as Harry Stone from 1984 to 1992?

Night Court made him a star, though he also played the con man Harry "The Hat" Gittes on Cheers, and at 17 he was doing tricks for passers-by in San Francisco.

In which Canadian city did a dressing-room visitor punch Harry Houdini repeatedly in the stomach?

Montreal was where the visitor asked whether stomach punches really did not hurt him, then struck before Houdini had a chance to brace himself.

Which magician's exclamation doubles as the tempo marking for a very fast piece of music?

Presto has been conjurors' patter since the 1590s and simply means quickly in Italian, which is why composers write it over their fastest passages.

Which birds did magician Channing Pollock produce from thin air in his famous signature act?

Doves made him a star: the routine swapped bulky props for pure manual dexterity, and it carried him into a second career starring in European films.

Which US network aired the 1990s specials in which the Masked Magician revealed how illusions work?

Fox devised the masked character itself and recruited Val Valentino to play him, and the first special in 1997 drew the best ratings any Fox special had scored.

Which magician's foundation offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove a paranormal power?

James Randi never had to pay out: no applicant ever got past the preliminary test, whose conditions both sides had agreed beforehand.

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress hosted seasons three to nine of Penn & Teller: Fool Us?

Alyson Hannigan was the second presenter the series had, and Brooke Burke took over from her for the tenth season.

Which British illusionist appeared to play Russian roulette live on Channel 4 in 2003?

Derren Brown had a volunteer load one of the revolver's six chambers, but the round presented to three million viewers as live was actually a blank.

Which DC Comics stage magician and Justice League member casts real spells by speaking backwards?

Zatanna models herself on her father Zatara, a stage magician and sorcerer who first appeared in Action Comics #1.

The 2006 film The Illusionist, with Edward Norton as the magician Eisenheim, is set in which city?

Vienna in 1889 is where Eisenheim falls foul of a crown prince, in a plot loosely based on a short story by Steven Millhauser.

Which French magician turned filmmaker said he found the stop trick when his camera jammed mid-take?

Georges Méliès wrote that a bus seemed to turn into a hearse when he ran the film, and he went on to direct over 500 pictures built on such effects.

Which film director starred as the magician in The Mercury Wonder Show, a 1943 show for US troops?

Orson Welles billed himself as Orson the Magnificent, put some $40,000 of his own money into the show and had Marlene Dietrich step in for Rita Hayworth.

What was Harry Houdini's birth name before his family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin?

Erik Weisz became Ehrich Weiss once the family adopted German spellings, and his family nickname Ehri is the likeliest root of the Harry he performed under.

Which actor played the title role in the 1953 Technicolor biopic Houdini, opposite Janet Leigh?

Tony Curtis was married to his co-star at the time, so the film's love story between the showman and his wife was played by a real couple.

Which magazine put Harry Houdini on a committee offering a cash prize to any genuine medium?

Scientific American's panel gave him his most famous target, Mina Crandon, a medium better known by the name Margery.

Which trunk illusion had Harry Houdini instantly swap places with his locked-up wife?

Metamorphosis was invented by John Nevil Maskelyne, though it is Houdini's name that stuck to it, and The Pendragons later became known for performing it at speed.

Which casino hotel housed the Cirque du Soleil show built around magician Criss Angel in 2008?

Luxor's parent company financed the show with $100 million, and it was the first time Cirque had built a production around one individual performer.

Which Victorian stage illusion made the late Tupac Shakur appear to perform at Coachella in 2012?

Pepper's ghost is named for John Henry Pepper, the scientist who made it a sensation in 1862, though the engineer Henry Dircks had been pitching the idea to theatres since 1858.

Which trick deck shares its name with the sinister hypnotist in George du Maurier's novel Trilby?

Svengali packs alternate normal cards with shortened duplicates of one card, so riffling one way shows an ordinary pack and the other way shows the same card throughout.

Magician John Nevil Maskelyne devised which coin-operated device, linked to the British saying 'spend a penny'?

A pay toilet lock that opened only when a penny went in was one of his inventions, and the coin such locks demanded lives on in the British euphemism.

Which comic-strip hero created by Lee Falk in 1934 relies on an unusually fast hypnotic technique?

Mandrake is called comics' first superhero by some historians, and the strip inspired a boy named George Kresge to become the mentalist The Amazing Kreskin.

In the 1969 TV special Frosty the Snowman, whose discarded hat brings the snowman to life?

Professor Hinkle, an inept magician, throws the hat away after a school show goes wrong, then chases Frosty to get it back once he sees it is truly magic.

Which former president's Secret Service agents had their pockets picked by performer Apollo Robbins?

Jimmy Carter's own itinerary and the keys to his motorcade were among the things Robbins lifted, and the stunt made the pickpocket's name.

In which Scottish city is The Great Lafayette buried beside Beauty, a dog Harry Houdini gave him?

Edinburgh's council let him bury the dog only if he agreed to lie there too, and four days after she died a lantern set his stage alight and killed him.

In the Westcar Papyrus, the magician Djedi reattaches a goose's severed head for which pharaoh?

Khufu offered a condemned prisoner for the demonstration, but Djedi refused to make a human suffer and worked the wonder on animals instead.

Which 1902 manual of gamblers' sleights was published under the pseudonym S. W. Erdnase?

The Expert at the Card Table still hides its author: Erdnase reversed spells E. S. Andrews, which is the main clue anyone has had for more than a century.

Which vaudeville magician kept her late husband Alexander's show touring after he died in 1896?

Adelaide Herrmann began as his assistant in the days when he toured as Herrmann the Great, and at first shared the stage with his nephew Leon until the two fell out.

The International Brotherhood of Magicians, founded in Winnipeg, calls its local groups what?

Rings echo the title of the organization's monthly magazine, The Linking Ring, and they meet in cities across dozens of countries.

Which routine, popularized by T. Nelson Downs, has a magician pluck coins from the air into a pail?

The Miser's Dream has also been billed as the Aerial Treasury, and it stays a crowd-pleaser because its plot rests on a wish everybody shares.

Which shuffle weaves the two halves of a deck together perfectly, alternating exactly one card at a time?

Faro shuffles are controlled rather than random, and the magician Alex Elmsley coined the names in-shuffle and out-shuffle for their two forms.

Which filmmaker directed Derek DelGaudio's theatre show In & Of Itself and its later screen version?

Frank Oz, the puppeteer who performed Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear on The Muppet Show, also made the film of it that reached Hulu in 2021.

The Magic Circle's Latin motto, Indocilis Privata Loqui, roughly translates as what?

Not apt to disclose secrets is a promise as well as a slogan: members give their word not to reveal methods except to genuine students of magic.