How to "Sex" an Egg

This is a fun little article, basically debunking pendulums. It would seem that chick sexing is barley a science (and a really gross, sad job), much less looking at the egg and taking a guess!

Paris Strong Men Unable to Lift Coulon

I've discussed Johnny Coulon in a previous post, but I was intrigued to find another clipping. While most of this article repeats what we already learned, I found this paragraph amusing:

Coulon's performance will probably start another craze, for in every place where two or more people come together they will be waiting to try to do the "bet-you-can't-lift-me" stunt.

The trend that could have been.

A Race With Cards

I thought this was a fun little newspaper clipping. One of the hundreds of magic tricks someone took the time to cut and save- a lot of these are paper clipped together and tucked into envelopes. There are dozens of clippings of brain teasers and magic tricks from the newspaper in the cigar boxes.

I know my Grandfather loved to clip articles to share; he would often send me articles of interest in his letters to me. I wonder if he taught himself any of these tricks.

Mysterious Disappearances Explained

I didn't find much about the publications mentioned in this clipping- The Recreation Hour or The Pathfinder- but the mention of the name 'Thurston' sent me down a fun little path until I ended up watching this great old footage on youtube. The poster didn't allow embedding, but you can see it here.

I am going to let the person who spent so much time collecting information on Thurston introduce him to you themselves at thurstonmastermagician.com. You can honestly see how much love and attention to detail Mr. Feldman gave to honor Mr. Thurson's legacy. If you are still craving more Thurston knowledge, a DVD documentary came out this year called, "When Thurston Came to Town," and on it you can see even more awesome old footage of Thurston in action!

Johnny Coulon: His Occult Trick Knocks 'Em Dead

The first sentence of the article really caught me: Gay Paree continues to be the main hangout of occult boxers. The concept of "occult boxers" makes me giggle when I compare it to my ideas about modern boxing.

Johnny Coulon weighed barely over 100 pounds and yet won all but 5 of his 200 (although some say 97....and still others say 300) matches. He was the bantamweight boxing champion of the world from 1910 until 1914. He wasn't actually summoning demons in the ring and willing them to do his bidding, but apparently he understood pressure points and how to use them to his advantage. After retiring from boxing, he even took his "trick" and toured with vaudeville as "The Man They Cannot Lift". It earned him enough money to buy a gym!

I was excited to find a ton of information about Johnny around the web. Here are some great sites & articles to start with:

• A Popular Science article from May of 1921
• Cyber Boxing Zone's entry on Johnny
• An old NY Times article (opens pdf)
• BoxRec.com's entry