Personal finance and a lesson from Harry Houdini

livemint.com:

Dear reader, have you ever heard of someone called Erich Weisz? Probably not. To be honest, even I had never heard of him before I started writing this piece. But you have probably heard of Harry Houdini, who lived through the late nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, after becoming a professional magician Weisz started calling himself Houdini. Of course, Houdini was much more than just a magician. As his Wikipedia entry points out, he was an “escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts".

One of Houdini’s famous acts was to invite the strongest man in the audience onstage. He claimed to be an amateur boxer and said that he could withstand any man’s punch without really flinching. This story is recounted by Morgan Housel in his new book Same As Ever. As Housel writes: “The stunt matched what people loved about his famous escapes: the idea that his body could conquer physics."

After one such show in 1926, Houdini invited a bunch of students to go backstage with him. This included an individual called Gordon Whitehead, who walked up to Houdini and started punching him in the stomach without any warning. He was being playful and thought he was recreating the same trick that he had just seen Houdini perform on stage. The trouble was Houdini wasn’t prepared for the punches that came. In the normal scheme of things, he would be flexing his solar plexus, steadying his stance and holding his breath. But at that point he wasn’t. As a result, Houdini’s appendix ruptured and then he died.

This, as Housel writes, was a person who was tied in chains and thrown into the river and came out alive. He was buried alive in sand and could escape in seconds. All because Houdini while