Throw Your Voice!

This is a fun little add- fool police AND your friends! I wonder if my Grandfather clipped it out as a child to maybe save up for it one day. I didn't find anything online that would tell me what the Claxophone was, but if you want to read about the klaxophone, you can via wikipedia.

Thurston's Card-Raising Trick

Once in a while I read message boards & such where they are debating about giving up magic trick secrets, and how it was always very hush hush. Apparently no one told that to this journalist (probably from the 1920's), who decided to disclose the secret behind one of Thurston's tricks. I wonder if Thurston minded.

A Sunday Morning Trick

While you're sitting at the table eating breakfast (or maybe dinner, depending on your time zone) challenge your table mate to this little trick. This clip made me smile- everyone had that one teacher of substitute who knew all of the brain-teasers and would challenge the class all day long and no one would ever get them. I would have loved to have taken this one into class!

Two Friday Updates

First of all, I forgot to scan the other side of the Coulon article. It is just a few paragraphs to tie up the story (upper left), but I also enjoyed the illustration on this side so I thought I would share:Also, a big thank you to Joseph from The Conjuring Arts Research Center who was able to shed a little light on the mostly unknown life of Louis F. Christianer! You can read the updated entry here, via MagicPedia- and there is even a picture of the man! The entry says he died young, which may explain why his name make a more substantial mark in the magic community.

Stunts of the Coulon Order Excite Wonder and Speculation

This is a great addition to my growing Coulon collection. If you've never heard of Johnny Coulon, try reading my previous posts on the subject here and here!

Found: Newspaper Ladder!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Sorry about the lapse in posts, I had a little technical difficulty with the scanner over the weekend. On the upside, EM reader Joseph was able to find the trick mentioned in last Wednesday's post!

AirbrushMagic.com has instructions on how to make a ladder from a newspaper:


Thanks, Joseph!

This ladder also got me thinking of one of my favorite childhood toys, the Jacob's Ladder (not the electrical one). I had one of these toys when I was around 3 or 4, and I remember looking at it often. Mine was pink on one side and yellow on the other, and I remember that I thought of lemonade when I played with it because of the colors. I guess I enjoyed visual illusions from a young age! Unplggd.com has a video on how to make one out of cassette tapes (you might turn down the sound though- the music is a little annoying):

Insane Audio Cassette Illusion Toy - The best video clips are here

Happy Monday! Regular posts will resume tomorrow :)

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!

Kadu The Magician

When I first unfolded this article and read it, I was curious to go and learn more about Kadu. In researching all of these items I had never come across his name- I thought I had a new magician to introduce to everyone! It would appear, however, that Kadu is simply a fictional magician created to teach children magic tricks through story telling. I don't see any more Kadu stories in the clippings... I wonder how long his run lasted in the local papers!

Secret of Girl-Lifting Trick

I found this fun illustration with the newspaper clippings. Hopefully I will find the article it goes with!

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.

Jumping Frog Brain Teaser

Here is a fun clipping- I wonder if anyone ever wrote in and successfully answered the question! I was also curious to know what paper these were coming from, and so I typed in some of the addresses on the list into googlemaps, and came up with Chicago and it's surrounding suburbs, so I am guessing this is from the Chicago Tribune. I tried looking it up in their archives, but was not able to find any mention of it- but I am not sure if they indexed their brainteasers.

I wonder if the answer penciled in beneath the headline was correct- I adjusted the levels to make it more readable:

A Stunt With A Suprise

I had the day off & some time to kill, so I figured I would attempt this simple parlor trick and maybe I could amuse my friends with it next time we were out somewhere that I couldn't potentially set on fire.

I set up the trick on my dining room table and had a glass of water nearby- and if you're going to try it to maybe see if you can get it to work, I suggest going out of your way to not burn something down....which is a slight tangent- you would never see this kind of thing in a newspaper today- there would be huge lawsuits from parents, whose children decided to try this while sitting on a pile of gasoline-soaked hay they had brought into the house.

Anyhow, here is my journey in photographs:

Yeah. So it did not send a fireball hurling across my dining room like I was expecting it to. There was plenty of tension between the two matches, the sticks simply didn't burn through- they just weakened enough for the tension to bend them and they fell. I guess they don't make match sticks like they used to. If anyone can get this trick to work, (safely! I am not responsible for you if you burn down your homes!) send me a few photos and I will post them on here!

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.

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