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Escapology
Escapology is the practice of escaping from restraints or other traps. Escapologists (also classified as escape artists) escape from handcuffs, straitjackets, cages, coffins, steel boxes, barrels, bags, burning buildings, fish-tanks, and other perils, often in combination. History The art of escaping from restraints and confined spaces has been a skill employed by performers for a very long time. It was not originally displayed as an overt act in itself but was instead used secretly to create illusions such as a disappearance or transmutation. In the 1860s, the Davenport Brothers, who were skilled at releasing themselves from rope ties, used the art to convey the impression they were restrained while they created spirit phenomena. Other illusionists, including John Nevil Maskelyne, worked out how the Davenports did their act and re-created the tricks to debunk the brothers' claims of psychic power. However, the re-creations did not involve overt escape, merely a replicat ...
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Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American Escapology, escape artist, Magic (illusion), magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his Escapology, escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin (1805–1871). He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United States and then as "Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it. In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's ''Daily Mirror'', keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him Premature burial, buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state ...
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Alan Alan
Alan Alan (born Alan Rabinowitz, 30 November 1926 – 4 July 2014) was a British escapologist and magician. He originated tricks that have subsequently become familiar features of the repertoire of other performers and he was honoured by The Magic Circle. Alan achieved fame through a series of stunts staged for the media. He made headline news in 1949 when a "buried alive" stunt, performed for Pathe News, nearly went wrong. He is credited with devising the burning-rope straitjacket escape, in which he is suspended upside-down from a crane with a length of thick rope doused with petrol; once ignited there is a short time to escape before the rope burns through. He appeared in a number of television magic shows, including ''The Magic of David Copperfield''. He also "taught" the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs prison how to escape from handcuffs in his performance with a number of other magicians. In more recent years he was seen on the Channel 4 TV show '' The Secret Cabaret'' wi ...
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Chinese Water Torture Cell
The Chinese Water Torture Cell is a predicament escape made famous by Hungarian-American magician Harry Houdini. The illusion consists of three parts: first, the magician's feet are locked in stocks; next, he is suspended in mid-air from his ankles with a restraint brace; finally, he is lowered into a glass tank overflowing with water and the restraint is locked to the top of the cell. History The original Chinese Water Torture Cell was built in England in 1911. 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 new escape (having learned with his Milk Can escape that patents failed to stop imitators). The first public performance was at the Circus Busch in Berlin, Germany, on September 21, 1912. In letters Houdini referred to the effect as "the Upside Down" or "USD". Houdini continued to perform the escape until his death in 1926. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting ...
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Metamorphosis (illusion)
Metamorphosis is the name of a stage illusion invented by John Nevil Maskelyne, but most often associated with famous escape artist Harry Houdini and performed to some renown (for speed) by The Pendragons, among others. It is also known amongst magicians as the Substitution Trunk (often abbreviated to Sub Trunk). In the illusion, an assistant (Houdini employed his wife Bess) is locked inside a large box or trunk, often after being restrained with handcuffs, ropes, bags, etc. The magician stands on the trunk and holds a curtain up to momentarily conceal his entire body. When the curtain is lowered, it is now revealed to be the assistant standing atop the box, the magician and assistant having changed places instantaneously. When the box is opened, it is shown to contain the magician, restrained as the assistant had been. In some acts, the magician is locked in the box first, then appears standing atop the box. Variations include the Aquarian Illusion created in the 1970s by A ...
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Nicholas Owen (martyr)
Nicholas Owen, S.J., (c. 1562 – 1/2 March 1606) was an English Jesuit lay brother who was the principal builder of priest holes during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I of England. Owen built many priest holes in the buildings of English Catholics from 1588 until his final arrest in 1606, when he was tortured to death by prison authorities in the Tower of London. Owen is honoured as a martyr by the Catholic Church and was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Life Nicholas Owen was born around 1562 in Oxford, England, into a devoutly Catholic family and grew up during the Penal Laws. His father, Walter Owen, was a carpenter and Nicholas was apprenticed as a joiner in February 1577, acquiring the skills that he would use to build hiding places. Two of his older brothers became priests. Owen served as a servant of Edmund Campion, who was arrested by priest hunters in 1581, and was himself arrested for protesting Campion's innocence. Upon his release, he entered ...
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Tower Of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separated from the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill. It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new Norman ruling class. The castle was also used as a prison from 1100 (Ranulf Flambard) until 1952 ( Kray twins), although that was not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence. As a whole, the Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were several phases of expansion, mainly ...
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John Clempert
John Clempert ( Siberia, April 19, 1878 – May 1940) was a Russian escape artist who became famous for his hanging tricks and for a legal dispute with Harry Houdini. Early career Clempert was born in Siberia on April 19, 1878, in a city Edwin A. Dawes indicated as “Poletavarr.” He started working in Farroni's Circus as a wrestler, but became famous as “The Man They Cannot Hang” for the acts of escapology he managed to perform after an assistant had hung him. In 1903, however, one of his hanging performances failed in Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ..., and the accident nearly costed Clempert his life. He abandoned the hanging tricks and joined the Warren American Circus, touring India and the Middle East. Legal dispute with Houdini The ...
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Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is th ...
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Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders = , founding_location = , type = Order of clerics regular of pontifical right (for men) , headquarters = Generalate:Borgo S. Spirito 4, 00195 Roma-Prati, Italy , coords = , region_served = Worldwide , num_members = 14,839 members (includes 10,721 priests) as of 2020 , leader_title = Motto , leader_name = la, Ad Majorem Dei GloriamEnglish: ''For the Greater Glory of God'' , leader_title2 = Superior General , leader_name2 = Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ , leader_title3 = Patron saints , leader_name3 = , leader_title4 = Ministry , leader_name4 = Missionary, educational, literary works , main_organ = La Civiltà Cattoli ...
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Beer Barrel
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, usually alcoholic beverages; a small barrel or cask is known as a keg. Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are made of French common oak (''Quercus robur''), white oak (''Quercus petraea''), American white oak ('' Quercus alba''), more exotic is Mizunara Oak all typically have standard sizes: Recently Oregon Oak ( Quercus Garryana) has been used. *"Bordeaux type" , *" Burgundy type" and *"Cognac type" . Modern barrels and casks can also be made of aluminum, stainless steel, and different types of plastic, such as HDPE. Someone who makes barrels is called a "barrel maker" or cooper (coopers also make buckets, vats, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, kegs, kilderkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts ...
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John Bosco
John Melchior Bosco ( it, Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco; pms, Gioann Melchior Bòsch; 16 August 181531 January 1888), popularly known as Don Bosco , was an Italian Catholic priest, educator, writer and saint of the 19th century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the ill-effects of industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System. A follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Francis de Sales, Bosco was an ardent devotee of Mary, mother of Jesus, under the title Mary Help of Christians. He later dedicated his works to de Sales when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, based in Turin. Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, now commonly ...
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