Biggest secrets : more uncensored truth about all sorts of stuff you are never supposed to know

by William Poundstone

Paper Book, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

973.92

Publication

New York : Morrow, c1993.

Description

From the author of the mega-selling Big Secrets comes the equally entertaining sequel which unveils the truth about all sorts of things you are never supposed to know. The recipe for Mrs. Fields Cookies... What backward messages on records are really trying to tell you... Frank Sinatra's real age... Why you can't counterfeit a lottery ticket... Barbra Streisand's blue movie... The other Boy Scout rituals... Ingmar Bergman's soap commercials... The formula for Play-Doh... and more.

User reviews

LibraryThing member MrJack

I purchased this book for the contents of Part IV, Illusion, Chapters 17-21.

• Chapter 17. How to Pull a Rabbit Out of a Hat
• Chapter 18. Escapes
• Chapter 19. The Gun Trick
• Chapter 20. Siegfried and Roy's White Tigers
• Chapter 21. Is Stage Hypnotism for Real?

In the chapter on escapes,

Poundstone tells how to escape from handcuffs, how to escape from a straitjacket, how to escape from a paper bag (don't laugh -- this was one of Houdini's most impressive effects), how to escape from a jail cell, how to be buried alive, and how to escape from the Chinese Water Torture Cell.

In the chapter about the Gun Trick, Poundstone describes the method employed by Chung Ling Soo (1861-1918). Don't try this at home. Soo's last performance of the Gun Trick was on March 23, 1918, at the Wood Green Empire theater in London. This performance turned out to be no illusion. When the gun was fired, Soo fell to the floor with a gunshot to the chest and died the next day.

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