During the same visit, Houdini boasted to the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he would leap from the Eads Bridge while shackled, and surface in the Mississippi River completely freed. Houdini later jumped from smaller bridges in various cities, but the Eads Bridge jump almost certainly didn’t happen because no local paper followed up with reporting on it. Always calculating the odds and risks, Houdini was probably well aware that the 100-foot drop could kill him.

The boast later became Hollywood “truth,” though. The 2014 History Channel special Houdini, with Adrien Brody in the starring role, does show him plunging into the river from the Eads Bridge. One of many documented historical fabrications in the show, it even upped the drama, depicting the jump happening in winter, and the river being frozen.

1908: The Milk Can Escape

Across the early 1900s, the now-celebrity Houdini took on countless new entrapments built by challengers, each more complex and grueling than the last. He was lashed to beds, stuffed into packing cases, and clasped into hundreds of different handcuffs. He escaped them all. But Houdini felt a problem looming over his hard-earned fame. His escapes were essentially the same trick over and over, and audiences were getting bored.

In January 1908, Houdini appeared before a small, unenthusiastic crowd at the Columbia Theater on Sixth Street in downtown St. Louis. Houdini wrote in his diary that upon seeing the half-empty theater, the Columbia’s manager, a Mr. Tate, told him “You’re not worth a five-dollar bill to me.”

It was experiences like this that sent Houdini’s mind whirring—he needed a new hook, something that brought a real sense of danger to his shows. “That fear is what attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building . . .” he wrote in his diary, “Therefore, I said to myself, ‘Why not give the public a real thrill?’”

On January 27, 1908, St. Louisans attending Houdini’s show watched as a giant galvanized metal jug was hauled onto the stage. Attendants filled it with water. Houdini stepped inside, water sloshing over the edge, and dropped below the surface. The lid was slammed and secured with six locks, and a curtain was drawn in front of the can. The audience—yawning and disinterested the night before—sat in uncomfortable, captivated silence.

We don’t know for sure if he did it at the St. Louis debut of what became known as the “Milk Can” escape, but Houdini was fond of inviting the audience to try and hold their breath along with him. The cavernous theater’s silence was broken only by the heavy exhaling of those who learned they couldn’t. After a minute, an axe-wielding attendant walked out ready to smash open the can, another visual to ratchet up the tension.

After two minutes, Houdini whipped back the curtain to reveal himself soaking wet and alive. The St. Louis crowd roared. The trick was so new Houdini didn’t even have a name for it, and he offered a $25 reward to whoever might come up with a compelling title.

The threat of death conveyed in the Milk Can escape brought Houdini’s career back to life. After its St. Louis debut, it became one of Houdini’s trademarks.

1914: The Chinese Water Torture Cell

By the time Harry Houdini returned to St. Louis’s Columbia Theater in 1914, the Milk Can escape had morphed into an even more elaborate show. Advertised as the “Chinese Water Torture Cell,” Houdini’s feet were locked into stocks and raised in the air, so he dangled upside down. He was lowered headfirst into a glass box filled with water, which was locked from the outside. Somehow—like always—he miraculously escaped.