Escaped buskers are on the loose around the world. From Harry Houdini to the Great Zoobini, these escape artists add one part magician, one part yoga, and one part contortionist. The sum of the whole produces quite an astonishing performance.

Escaping everything from locked boxes, handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets, locked water filled drums, locked containers of sand and many other restraints, these buskers pack their shows with hilarious comic acts, illusions, and incredible escape stunts.

Bound in chains, these artists sometimes work against the clock in dangerous circumstances performing their death-defying acts. The escapee knows how to escape even the most securely contrived apparatus.

Located in Appleton, Wisconsin, the Great Houdini Museum is dedicated to celebrating the life and legacy of the world's greatest escape artist and magician of all time. He was once handcuffed, chained and boxed, then dropped into the Hudson river only to escape a few minutes later.

Houdini enjoyed total control over his bodily functions. One of Houdini's talents was to regurgitate a key from his stomach.

Houdini liked to display his physical strengths. He often had people sock him in the stomach to show his developed muscles could take any blow. However, unknown to anyone, he had contracted appendicitis. Having just broken his ankle in the previous performance, a college student's blow caught him off guard and ruptured his appendix. A doctor confirmed he had appendicitis but Houdini said, "The show must go on."

In his final performance in Detroit, he collapsed onstage during the first act, was revived, finished the show, then collapsed again. Houdini was rushed to Grace Hospital where the master magician, following a 7 day struggle to live, died at age 52.

Anyone in the escape artist realm is sure to have read about the wonderful Houdini who thrilled audiences of thousands. Today, millions have been subject to the art of escape. Volumes of works exist on escape artist tricks of the trade mostly inspired by the genius of The Great Houdini.