One of the most dangerous and daring illusions that a magician can attempt is the famed bullet catch trick.
He drops a bullet into the barrel and uses a ramrod to push the bullet up against the gunpowder.
Many magicians have lost their lives attempting to catch the bullet.
Despite his name, Chung Ling Soo was not Chinese, but an American born to Scottish parents.
His real name was William Ellsworth Robinson.
William Ellsworth Robinson before he took on his Chinese disguise.
Photo: Didier Morax.
C. Fechner Collection
In 1898, a Chinese magician named Ching Ling Foo began touring the United States.
Robinson claimed that he had figured out how the illusion worked.
He put on Chinese attire, shaved his facial hair and wore his hair in a queue.
He began to call himself Chung Ling Soo (a variation of Ching Ling Foo’s name).
Robinson claimed that he was the son of a Scottish missionary who married a Cantonese woman.
But the press was not interested in Soos real identity.
His act was as good as the original, and for the tabloids, it was all that mattered.
Enduring public humiliation, Foo withdrew the challenge.
In reality, the marked bullet never went into the gun but was slipped into Soos palm.
What went into the muzzle was a substitute.
Chung Ling Soo next to his fake wife Suee Seen and an assistant child.
He fell to the ground and exclaimed, Oh my God.
Lower the curtain, speaking in English for the first time in public since he adopted his Chinese persona.
He died the following day.
