David Blaine

BBC News stated, "The 26-year-old magician has outdone his hero, Harry Houdini, who had planned a similar feat but died in 1926 before he could perform it."

David Blaine (born April 4, 1973) is an American illusionist, endurance artist, and extreme performer.

He is best known for his high-profile feats of endurance and has set and broken several world records.

One of his talents is the ability to regurgitate water and small objects.

Blaine was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of a single mother, Patrice White, a teacher who was of Russian Jewish ancestry, and a father who is a Vietnam War veteran of Puerto Rican and Italian descent.

When Blaine was four years old, he saw a magician performing magic on the subway.

This sparked a lifelong interest for him.

He was raised by his mother and attended a Montessori school in Brooklyn.

They later moved to Little Falls, New Jersey, where he attended Passaic Valley Regional High School.

Per one account, his mother developed cancer when Blaine was 15 and died when he was 20.

Per another, "When Blaine was 21, his mother was stricken with cancer and passed away in 1994."

When Blaine was 17 years old, he moved to Manhattan, New York City.

On May 19, 1997, Blaine's first television special, David Blaine: Street Magic, aired on ABC.

"It really, really does break new ground," said Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller.

When asked about his performance style, Blaine explained, "I'd like to bring magic back to the place it used to be 100 years ago."

Time commented, "His deceptively low-key, ultracool manner leaves spectators more amazed than if he'd razzle-dazzled."

In Magic Man, aired January 16, 1998, Blaine is shown traveling across the country, entertaining unsuspecting pedestrians in Atlantic City, Compton, Dallas, the Mojave Desert, New York City, and San Francisco, recorded by a small crew with handheld cameras.

Jon Racherbaumer commented: "Make no mistake about it, the focus of this show, boys and girls, is not Blaine. It is really about theatrical proxemics; about the show-within-a-show and the spontaneous, visceral reactions of people being astonished."

USA Today called Blaine the "hottest name in magic right now".

On April 5, 1999, Blaine was entombed in an underground plastic box underneath a 3-ton water-filled tank for seven days, across from Trump Place on 68th St. and Riverside Boulevard, as part of a stunt titled "Buried Alive".

According to CNN, "Blaine's only communication to the outside world was by a hand buzzer, which could have alerted an around-the-clock emergency crew standing by."

BBC News reported that the plastic coffin had 6 in of headroom and 2 in on each side.

On the final day of the stunt, April 12, hundreds of news teams were stationed at the site for the coffin opening.

A team of construction workers removed a portion of the 75 cuft of gravel surrounding the 6 ft deep coffin before a crane lifted the water tank.

Blaine emerged and told the crowd, "I saw something very prophetic ... a vision of every race, every religion, every age group banding together, and that made all this worthwhile."

On November 27, 2000, Blaine performed a stunt called Frozen in Time, where he attempted and failed to stand in a large block of ice located in Times Square, New York City for 72 hours.

It was covered on a TV special.

He was lightly dressed and appeared to be shivering even before the blocks of ice were placed around him.

A tube supplied him with air and water, while his urine was removed with another tube.

He was encased in the box of ice for 63 hours, 42 minutes, and 15 seconds before being removed with chainsaws.

The ice was transparent and resting on an elevated platform to show that he was actually inside the ice the entire time.

He was removed from the ice and taken to a hospital due to fears he might be going into shock.

The New York Times reported, "The magician who emerged from the increasingly unstable ice box seemed a shadow of the confident, robust, shirtless fellow who entered two days before."

Blaine later said it took a month to fully recover and that he had no plans to attempt a stunt of this difficulty in the future.

On May 22, 2002, a crane lifted Blaine onto a 100 ft high and 22 in wide pillar in Bryant Park, New York City.

He was not harnessed to the pillar, although there were two retractable handles on either side of him to grasp in the event of harsh weather.

He remained on the pillar for 35 hours.

He ended the feat by jumping down onto a landing platform made out of a 12 ft high pile of cardboard boxes and sustained a mild concussion.

He later said in his 2009 TED Talk that he had had severe hallucinations in the final hours of this stunt, causing the buildings and structures around him to look like animal heads.

In 2010, a magician from Israel named Hezi Dean broke Blaine's record when he was encased in a block of ice for 66 hours.