Houdini's underwater coffin test

On 5 August 1926 Houdini stayed sealed in a casket under the Hotel Shelton pool for 91 minutes to match a fakir's claimed trance feat.

On 5 August 1926, in front of journalists, Houdini climbed into a metal casket that his assistants lowered into the swimming pool of New York's Hotel Shelton. It was airtight. Inside, the heat approached 100 degrees, and at one point the casket almost overturned. He came out 91 minutes later, drenched and pale. A buzzer was wired in for him to press if he felt death was near, and a telephone line let his assistant James Collins call down every few minutes with the time.

The stunt answered Rahman Bey, an Egyptian fakir who put a needle through his cheek, halted his pulse and had himself buried alive. Hereward Carrington, Houdini's enemy from the Margery committee, promoted Bey and put his powers down to mysticism, and his getting through the buried coffin down to a cataleptic trance. Houdini, who set out to rival the feat by ordinary means, said he succeeded through slow breathing. One occult reference book reads fakir feats as real cataleptic states, a different view.