h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I enjoyed it very much so from me as well!

Some faux chinese magician brought this trick to England and performed it in London with success. His assistant would take a box into the audience and ask them to carve a musket ball. They would then deposit this baack in the box and she would take it on stage. The box would then be opened at the other end and a real pellet loaded into the gun. The gun would fire, the magician would catch the pellet in his teeth- spit it into the box and the assistant would take it back for the audience member to identify ~ cheers all round.

In this case the trick lay in that when the musket was fired the shot was diverted to an underbarrell and so the bullet would not be fired at all. However one night it all went wrong, powder tracked through to the real barrell which had become worn through constant cleaning, fired the real bullet and the magician was shot.

Unfortunately I can't remember any names or anything else about it. So when I started reading this, I thought this was going to be the story.

What an interesting (though tragic) story. I always worry about magicians and acrobats when they're performing, I guess that's why.

Maybe somebody else can identify the party for us, McKay.

I think this is the right one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Ling_Soo

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Well done!


lil x

Congrats from me too, Dmitri!

all round applause!

Thats the one Willem

Dmitri, Nick points out here http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/plain/F21544445?thread=8287341 that Harry Houdini took his name from Robert-Houdin. Worth a mention?

Dmitri said it himself in the first post, I think.


Geggs

Great! So is it worth a mention?

I'm sure Dmitri will tell you soon (it's still relatively early in the US). Maybe as a footnote somewhere?

Sorry I'm late.

I didn't want to mention Houdini in the entry because Houdini later wrote a book called 'The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin', an incredibly mean-spirited exercise.

Also, I didn't know where in the story to put the information without its being a distraction.

Can you think of a good place for a footnote, Gnomon?

Or we could put a note about it in the final section?

I'd put in a postscript - mentioning Houdini in few sentences just before the Further Reading section - but it is up to you. If you feel it would unbalance the entry, then by all means leave it out.

I added a couple of sentences and a link. Will that do?