The traditional story of Harry Houdini's death is that the most famous escape artist of all time couldn't run from a ruptured appendix. Supposedly, a college student punched him in the stomach before he'd readied himself by tensing his muscles, and the resulting infection killed him.
Now, "his great-nephew wants to exhume the magician's body to determine ifenemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact withthe dead."
The theory sounds pretty unlikely: the spiritualists of the 1920s were certainly wacky, but they seem a lot more eccentric than violent. And how might doctors have mistaken poisoning for a busted appendix?
Still, it sounds like a very late autopsy will go forward once his body is disinterred:
Houdini can't escape mystery [Balt Sun]
