Today in History—August 5: Houdini Wins a Water Fight

One hundred years ago today, Harry Houdini held his breath. For a really long time.

Houdini is famous for his exploits as an escape artist: breaking out of jail cells, unlocking handcuffs, and extricating himself from straightjackets. This performance, however, involved staying put.

The challenge was unofficially posed by rival magician Rahman Bey, who, on July 21, 1926, spent an hour locked in a coffin partially submerged underwater. (The average person could survive nowhere near that long with such limited air.) Bey’s stunt was highly publicized—as was Houdini’s alleged bet against him.

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Houdini was no stranger to stunts that were literally breathtaking. “[I] have been nailed in boxes and thrown into rivers,” he wrote, “locked in milk cans for two and three minutes.” But those short bursts hardly compared to more than an hour confined in a coffin underwater. Never one to be outdone, Houdini decided to beat Bey at his own game.

After two trial runs—one in which he spent about 70 minutes underwater, the other about 73—Houdini gathered a crowd at the pool at the Hotel Shelton in New York City. He stripped into a pair of shorts (minimal clothing to prove he wasn’t hiding a breathing tube up a sleeve) and lowered himself into a custom, airtight iron coffin. Eight men pushed it underwater…and held it there.

“My lungs are in remarkable condition,” Houdini wrote to his doctor after the fact. You could never accuse Houdini of humility—but in this case, he was right. The pressure underwater was immense: Houdini reported taking an average of only seventeen breaths per minute. A phone line connecting Houdini with his assistant was the only way spectators aboveground knew the magician was still alive.

At the 88-minute mark, things started to get bleak. Houdini reported “see[ing] yellow lights” and worried he might “go to sleep.” Still, he didn’t ask to be freed until he hit an hour and a half underwater—beating Bey’s record by exactly 31 minutes.

Houdini suffered surprisingly few ill effects from his 91 minutes in the coffin, reporting only a lingering feeling of “irritability.” Seems like a low price to pay for making history…even if no one asked it of him but himself.

Famous Birthdays

1902: Irene Rice Pereira—American abstract artist

1930: Neil Armstrong—American astronaut and first person to walk on the Moon

1946: Shirley Ann Jackson—First Black woman to receive a doctorate from MIT

1962: Patrick Ewing—Jamaican-born American basketball player