Harry Houdini, the era's most famous escape artist, dies in a Detroit hospital of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, exactly on Halloween. Popular legend attributes his death to a punch to the stomach delivered days earlier by a college student testing Houdini's claim of being able to withstand any blow, though doctors believe the appendicitis was likely unrelated to the punch.
Erik Weisz, born in Budapest and raised in Wisconsin as Harry Houdini, had spent three decades escaping straitjackets, packing cases, and underwater tanks in front of astonished crowds, becoming the most recognizable entertainer of his age and a relentless debunker of fraudulent spiritualists.
On October 22, 1926, backstage in Montreal, a college student named J. Gordon Whitehead asked if it was true Houdini could withstand any punch to the abdomen. Before Houdini could properly brace, Whitehead struck him several times. Houdini, in pain, continued performing over the following days despite worsening symptoms.
By the time he reached Detroit, his appendix had ruptured and peritonitis had set in. He died on Halloween afternoon, October 31, 1926, at age 52. His wife Bess held annual séances on Halloween for a decade afterward, hoping he would fulfill a pact to contact her from beyond the grave — he never did, a final, fitting rebuke from the man who spent his life exposing fake mediums.