Harry Houdini was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874. His parents were Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and Cecelia. Houdini and was one of seven children.  The family emigrated to the United States and  arrived on July 3, 1878. They first lived in Appleton and became an American citizen. As a child, Ehrich AKA Harry Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air”. Weiss became a professional magician and called himself “Harry Houdini” after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.

Houdini began his magic career in 1891.  At the outset Houdini focused on traditional card tricks and performed in dime museums, sideshows and even circuses, but had little success.

Houdini’s “big break” came in 1899 when he performed on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. In 1900, Houdini toured Europe. He gave a demonstration of escapology at Scotland Yard, and succeeded in baffling the police so effectively that he was booked to perform at the Alhambra theatre for a fixed six months.

Houdini toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, he would challenge the police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched. In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. Houdini claimed that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept. In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who alleged that he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he opened the judge’s safe. With his new-found wealth and success, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000, a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem, New York City.

 From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in plain sight of street audiences. Because of imitators, on January 25, 1908, Houdini put his “handcuff act” behind him and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded repertoire with his escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him. These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water), riveted boilers, wet-sheets, mailbags, and even the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. Brewers challenged Houdini to escape from a barrel after they filled it with beer in Scranton, PA and other cities.

Many of these challenges were pre-arranged with local merchants in what is certainly one of the first uses of mass tie-in marketing. Rather than promote the idea that he was assisted by spirits, as did the Davenport Brothers and others, Houdini’s advertisements showed him making his escapes via dematerializing although Houdini himself never claimed to have supernatural powers.

1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the act had nothing to do with his death. Throughout his career, Houdini explained some of his tricks in books written for the magic brotherhood. In Handcuff Secrets (1909), he revealed how many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied force, others with shoestring. Other times, he carried concealed lock picks or keys, being able to regurgitate small keys at will. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, moving his arms slightly away from his body, and then dislocating his shoulders.[citation needed]

His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind curtains, with him popping out free at the end. However, Houdini’s brother, (who was also an escape artist, billing himself as Theodore Hardeen), discovered that audiences were more impressed when the curtains were eliminated so they could watch him struggle to get out. On more than one occasion, they both performed straitjacket escapes whilst dangling upside-down from the roof of a building for publicity.[citation needed]

 For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in vaudeville. For many years, he was the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville. One of Houdini’s most notable non-escape stage illusions was performed at New York’s Hippodrome Theatre, when he vanished a full-grown elephant (with its trainer) from the stage, beneath which was a swimming pool. In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America’s oldest magic company. The business is still in operation today. He also served as President of the Society of American Magicians (aka S.A.M.) from 1917 until his death in 1926. In the final years of his life (1925/26), Houdini launched his own full-evening show, which he billed as “3 Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums Exposed

In 1901, Houdini introduced his own original act, the Milk Can Escape. In this act, Houdini would be handcuffed and sealed inside an over-sized milk can filled with water and make his escape behind a curtain. As part of the effect, Houdini would invite members of the audience to hold their breath along with him while he was inside the can. Advertised with dramatic posters that proclaimed “Failure Means A Drowning Death”, the escape proved to be a sensation. Houdini soon modified the escape to include the milk can being locked inside a wooden chest, being chained or padlocked, and even inside another milk can. Houdini only performed the milk can escape as a regular part of his act for four years, but it remains one of the acts most associated with the escape artist. Houdini’s brother, Theodore Hardeen, continued to perform the milk can (and the wooden chest variation) into the 1940s.

In 1912, the vast number of imitators prompted Houdini to replace his Milk Can act with the Chinese Water Torture Cell. In this escape, Houdini’s feet would be locked in stocks, and he would be lowered upside down into a tank filled with water. The mahogany and metal cell featured a glass front, through which audiences could clearly see Houdini. The stocks would be locked to the top of the cell, and a curtain would conceal his escape. In the earliest version of the Torture Cell, a metal cage was lowered into the cell, and Houdini was enclosed inside that. While making the escape more difficult (the cage prevented Houdini from turning), the cage bars also offered protection should the front glass break. The original cell was built in England, where Houdini first performed the escape for an audience of one person as part of a one-act play he called “Houdini Upside Down”. This was so he could copyright the effect and have grounds to sue imitators (which he did). While the escape was advertised as “The Chinese Water Torture Cell” or “The Water Torture Cell”, Houdini always referred to it as “the Upside Down” or “USD”. The first public performance of the USD was at the Circus Busch in Berlin, on September 21, 1912. Houdini continued to perform the escape until his death in 1926. One of Houdini’s most popular publicity stunts was to have himself strapped into a regulation straitjacket and suspended by his ankles from a tall building or crane. Houdini would then make his escape in full view of the assembled crowd. In many cases, Houdini would draw thousands of onlookers who would choke the street and bring city traffic to a halt. Houdini would sometimes ensure press coverage by performing the escape from the office building of a local newspaper. In New York City, Houdini performed the suspended straitjacket escape from a crane being used to build the New York subway. After flinging his body in the air, he escaped from the straitjacket. Starting from when he was hoisted up in the air by the crane, to when the straitjacket was completely off, it took him two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. After being battered against a building in high winds during one escape, Houdini performed the escape with a visible safety wire on his ankle so that he could be pulled away from the building if necessary.

Another one of Houdini’s most famous publicity stunts was to escape from a nailed and roped packing crate after it had been lowered into water. Houdini first performed the escape in New York’s East River on July 7, 1912. Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so Houdini hired a tugboat and invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, then nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was then lowered into the water. Houdini escaped in fifty-seven seconds. The crate was pulled to the surface and found to still be intact with the manacles inside. Houdini would perform this escape many times, and even performed a version on stage, first at Hamerstein’s Roof Garden (where a 5,500-gallon tank was specially built), and later at the New York Hippodrome.

Houdini performed at least three variations on a “Buried Alive” stunt/escape during his career. The first was near Santa Ana, California in 1915, and it almost cost Houdini his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help. When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his assistants. Houdini wrote in his diary that the escape was “very dangerous” and that “the weight of the earth is killing.”

Houdini’s second variation on Buried Alive was an endurance test designed to expose mystical Egyptian performer Rahman Bey, who claimed to use supernatural powers to remain in a sealed casket for an hour. Houdini bettered Bey on August 5, 1926, by remaining in a sealed casket submerged in the swimming pool of New York’s Hotel Shelton for one hour and a half. Houdini claimed he did not use any trickery or supernatural powers to accomplish this feat, just controlled breathing. He repeated the feat at the YMCA in Worcester Massachusetts on September 28, 1926, this time remaining sealed for one hour and eleven minutes.

Houdini’s final Buried Alive was an elaborate stage escape that was to feature in his full evening show. The stunt would see Houdini escape after being strapped in a strait-jacket, sealed in a casket, and then buried in a large tank filled with sand. While there are posters advertising the escape (playing off the Bey challenge they boasted “Egyptian Fakirs Outdone!”), it is unclear whether Houdini ever performed Buried Alive on stage. The stunt was to be the feature escape of his 1927 season, but Houdini died on October 31, 1926. The bronze casket Houdini created for Buried Alive was used to transport Houdini’s body from Detroit back to New York following his death on Halloween.

In 1906 Houdini started showing films of his outside escapes as part of his vaudeville act. In Boston he presented a short film called Houdini Defeats Hackenschmidt, a famous wrestler of the day. In 1909 Houdini made a film in Paris for Cinema Lux titled Marvelous Exploits of the Famous Houdini in Paris. It featured a loose narrative designed to showcase several of Houdini’s famous escapes, including his straitjacket and underwater handcuff escapes. That same year Houdini got an offer to star as Captain Nemo in a silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the project never made it into production.

Neither Houdini’s acting career nor his own film production company FDC found success, and he gave up on the movie business in 1923, complaining that “the profits are too meager”. But his celebrity was such that, years later, he would be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1909, Houdini became fascinated with aviation. He purchased a French Voisin biplane for $5000 and painted his name in bold block letters on the  side panels and tail. After crashing once, he made his first successful flight on November 26, 1909 in Hamburg, Germany. The following year Houdini toured Australia. He brought along his Voisin biplane and made the first powered flight over Australia on March 18 at Diggers Rest, north of Melbourne. Following his Australia tour, Houdini put the Voisin into storage in England. He announced he would use it to fly from city to city during his next Music Hall tour, although Houdini never in fact flew again.

Houdini made the only known recordings of his voice on Edison wax cylinders on October 29, 1914, in Flatbush, New York. On them, Houdini practices several different introductory speeches for his famous Chinese Water Torture Cell. He also invites his sister, Gladys, to recite a poem. Houdini then recites the same poem in German. The six wax cylinders were discovered in the collection of magician John Mulholland after his death in 1970. They are part of the David Copperfield collection.

 In the 1920s Houdini turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit that would inspire and be followed by later-day conjurers. Houdini’s training in magic allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. None were able to do so, and the prize was never collected. The first to be tested was medium George Valentine of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. As his fame as a “ghostbuster” grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was Mina Crandon, also known as “Margery”. Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book, A Magician Among the Spirits. These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, a firm believer in Spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini’s exposés. Doyle came to believe that Houdini was a powerful spiritualist medium, and had performed many of his stunts by means of paranormal abilities and was using these abilities to block those of other mediums that he was ‘debunking’. This disagreement led to the two men becoming public antagonists.

Before Houdini died, he and his wife, Bess, agreed that if Houdini’s spirit came back to earth, he would utter “Rosabelle believe” as a secret codeword to prove that it was actually him. This was a phrase from a play that Bess performed in when the couple first met. Bess held yearly séances on Halloween for ten years after Houdini’s death, but Houdini’s spirit never appeared. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful séance on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death, later saying in 1943 that “ten years is long enough to wait for any man.” The tradition of holding a séance for Houdini continues by magicians throughout the world to this day; the Official Houdini Séance is currently organized by Sidney Hollis Radner, a Houdini aficionado from upstate New York. Yearly Houdini Séances are also conducted in Chicago at the Excaliber nightclub by “necromancer” Neil Tobin on behalf of the Chicago Assembly of the Society of American Magicians; and at the Houdini Museum in Scranton by magician Dorothy Dietrich who previously held them at New York’s famous Magic Towne House with such magical notables as Houdini biographers Walter B. Gibson and Milbourne Christopher. Gibson was asked by Bess Houdini to carry on the tradition. Before he died, Walter passed on the tradition to Dorothy Dietrich.

Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix on October 31, aged 52. Eyewitnesses to an incident at the Princess Theater in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini’s death was caused by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered multiple blows to Houdini’s abdomen to test Houdini’s claim that he was able to take any blow to the body above the waist without injury. Houdini’s funeral was held on November 4, 1926 in the Machpelah Cemetery, New York with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance.

 source        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini

I remember the transcendent experience started with me sitting at the dressing table and looking out through a window at the fields and hills of the Black Mountains and watching the wild horses grazing.  The experience went from the everyday reality of looking at a lovely scene to seeing it as phenominally beautyfull and then the experience openned up into transcendence which seems to me to have been a much more extensive cosciousness that interconnected with everything you are and everything around you. 

 I suspected  that I was not the only one to have had such an experience but it took years to discover, not until I went to college, that many before me and no doubt many since, have experienced such things.  Although for me it did not seem to change my life, but occurred in the aftermath of a huge change caused by the illness and heralded a ominous and incredible destiny that would take decadeds to realise.

 Reality is like a tapestry

It is woven from many strands

That form

The past, present and future.

As human beings

We get to see only one strand

And

Never the big picture.

I found this interesting and it had never occurred to me that birth control could cause this problem.

A bit of info:   Testosterone is a hormone that gives a woman her sex drive. Testosterone is produced by the testicles of men.  But in women it is produced by the adrenal gland.   I have a low to non existant sex drive and also had a tumour of the adrenal gland.

The Aqua Marcia was the longest of the 11 aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome. It arose from springs in the Anio valley, near the modern day towns of Arsoli and Agosta and followed an ancient road between Rome and Tivoli called the via Tiburtina. After a journey of over 91 km the aqueduct reached Rome and supplied water to the Viminal Hill, Caelian, Aventine, Palatine, and Capitoline regions of the city.

The Aqua Marcia was constructed between 144 – 140 BC by the Roman Magistrate PraetorQuintus Marcius Rex, after whom it was named. The aqueduct was funded from the spoils from the Roman conquests of Corinth and Carthage during the Third Punic War. The water provided by the Aqua Marcia was an important ingredient allowing Rome’s expansion into a large imperial city.

During its long history it was extended and joined to other aqueducts. One such extension to the Capitoline Hill caused controversy due to a warning in the prophetic Sibylline Books about bringing water there. The aqueduct was repaired on a number of occasions. Both Marcus Agrippa and then later the Emperor Augustus are recorded to have been responsible for renovation works on part of the aqueduct. Augustus also linked it to the Aqua Augusta, which doubled its output. However, in the time of the Emperor Nero the output was reduced to a trickle, having had much of its supply siphoned off by the populace before reaching the city. However, later generations insured the supply was increased again. By the time the distinguished Roman aristocrat Frontinus measured the city’s aqueducts in about 97AD, the Aqua Marcia was supplying 187,600,000 litres a day to the city. This made it the second-greatest source of the city’s water.

The Aqua Marcia can be seen today in various ruins around Rome and its outskirts. The still-functioning Aqua Felice, built in 1586, runs along long stretches of Aqua Marcia’s route.

Dr who and the reprise of the role was of course discussed.  Ecclestone was not a fan of Dr Who and commented that he didn’t like the authorotative image of the police box, the posh English accents and didn’t feel invited in to the world of Dr Who.  Ecclestone was a northern lad into football and, then I suppose, typical northern pursuits. He was not a Dr Who fan and had no interest in the series. 

My relationship with the series was quite different.  My parents and therefore myself watched the series right from the start.  I can’t remember the early series, I would have only been about three at the time.  Unlike Ecclestone I liked authoriatative images, the police box, the accents and the commanding, superior intellects portraid on the series.  Although from Wales, much of my childhood was spent in Guildford where the accents heard on Dr Who were quite common and so, I didn’t find the world of Dr Who, with their mostly southern England accents at all alienating but, at least accent wise, quite familiar. 

I think I can assume that females, or at least certain females, like, enjoy or look for authoritative figures.  Certainly for me as a child looking up to a strong, reliable authoritative figure was far more desirable than striving to be that figure myself, and in truth  this still applies.  Male authoritative figures being more desirable and believable than the female counterpart.   Although a child of the sixties, a time of sexual revelution, the man still took the lead and wore the pants and I believe still does.  I have recently finished working in a small local museum.  The female authority figures, weren’t very aurthoritative, rather inconstant and unreliable and typically female.  There was however a   young man who was rather large with a speech impediment.  I think his rather large size as well as his knowledge and something of his mannerism made him to my mind an authority figure more than any of the others and that I liked and so therefore liked him, although in reality I am twice as old as him and he young enough to be my son, if every I had had a child. 

I think what endeered me to Dr Who was the fantasy of time travel and the reality, my reality of time travel experience.  Well, seeing the future at least.  As a child and teenager I lived in a world where something very strange was happening, a great secret was being kept that everybody seemed to know about but no one talked about.  Human beings could see into the future and pick up each others thoughts.  These were portraid on many sci-fi adventure programes and other things besides.  But very little if any real information existed about these unexplainable abilities and unbelievable experiences.  My education involved learning about things that would have no relevance to my life, never experience and didn’t need to know.  Maths, history, geography and science taught me about a world that bore little relationship to my everyday life.  I would never see the atom or distant galaxies, the amazon jungle or any of the Queens of Henry VIII.  Where as it was all very interesting, much of the subjects taught had no benefit.  Meanwhile, something that was very relevant to my life on a regular basis and what was to become increasingly relevant, the  nature of psychic ability, was never touched apon.

I looked forward to my weekly adventures with Dr Who and although I knew these were a fantasy, the series itself served to help me connect with society.  I was a psychic and a child that lived in an island of isolation with an ability that was well known to the world but, in my childhood world, remained in the shadows. 

The world was I suppose a scary place for it’s hidden secrets and its bald face lie in the face of the truth.  I wanted consistency, honesty and superiorty from authoriative figures.  I wanted what was relevant in mylife to be explained and understood, until that time I would embrace Dr Who as a shadowy icon of a truth that remained unspoken. 

Well, almost half a century later, I am now almost firty-one, the truth is out and I’m now watching people struggling to deal with it.  They now have become part of my world and my world or at least a certain aspect of it is emerging.  Lets hope this ancient ability will find its rightful place in modern day society.

Traditionally society is divided into different classes, the ruling class in the form of a King, Pharaoh or Emperor, his consorts and often extended family; the middle class made from the supporting dignitaries, ministers and executives; and the lower class who consist of the rest of society in the form of the peasants, workers and sundry persons.

To establish their power base the head of the ruling class would align themselves with a God or Gods, depending on the culture.  They would either claim to be Gods themselves; born of a God or God and virgin; or to be the chosen of God. 

The close association between the ruler and the God or Gods gave them a divine right to govern over the people, extend bounties to those that pleased them, punish those that didn’t and dictate laws to the millions  of minions that they ruled.

It is not surprising then to find in the very working class areas of Britain such as Wales and the Northern regions of Britain a rejection of class standards that extends to religion and a more atheist than theist sentiment.  God of course being allied with the upper classes and the divine right of the ruling classes.

It has long been believed that God is the source of all Goodness and Justice and that those who act on Gods behalf, kings, priests and the like are able to dictate through divine inspiration what is right and good; or what is wrong and evil.

In a theist state this of course does not apply.  But then how do we determine right from wrong and good from evil?

I think a general rule of thumb is to do no evil or harm to anyone.  This however is very subjective.   Furthermore most people I believe would say that considering the needs of others and society in general is a good thing and the right thing to do.  However, as observed many, many times, when it comes to action over words people act on their own behalf, ultimately favouring their own position in life and their own unique point of view.

It is my belief that a society whose moral and ethical considerations is laid down by a religion is generally a more justifiable and fair society than one that has no theological basis to its morals and ethics.  Whereas the hard and fast rulers of religion shows up clearly when something wrong is done, this cannot be said of the more socialistically inclined non-theological parts of society.

I am of course thinking of the 13 or so years of labour government in Britain and the financial mess that the country, my country is now left in.  In the region where I live, Wales, there is a strong labour following.  There has been little explanation or justification about why the government lied to the people rather than admitting to the enormous debt crisis.  This and other such actions are swept under the carpet as if they never happened by the pro-socialist labour supporters. 

It seems with these people it doesn’t matter how much harm you do to the country or a person by whatever means, you can redefine what is right and wrong, good and bad to please yourself. 

Nobody knows in this circumstance where the goal posts are.