Ehrich Weiss (Harry Houdini) born to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss and his wife Cecelia on March 24 in Budapest, Hungary. At age nine, Ehrich and some neighborhood friends establish a five-cent circus.

When vaudeville impresario Martin Beck "discovered" a struggling Harry Houdini in 1899, it was Houdini's ability to escape from handcuffs which caught his attention. Although Houdini was hardly ...