Hungarian-American performer Harry Houdini was BOTD in 1874. Born Erich Weisz in Budapest (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), his family emigrated to the United States when he was four, settling in Wisconsin. Poverty prompted their move to New York, where the nine-year old Erich began performing as a trapeze artist. He became a professional magician in his teens, taking the name Harry Houdini, initially performing with his brother and later with his wife Wilhelmina Rahner. In 1899, he was booked by the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, touring Britain, Europe and the United States and dazzling his audiences with a series of elaborate, seemingly impossible escape acts. Within five years he was one of the world’s most well-known and highly paid performers. Handsome and well-built, his sexuality was a key component in his popular appeal: notorious for stripping naked for full body searches, his use of handcuffs, chains, ropes and straitjackets generated a sado-masochistic excitement in many of his male admirers. Many of his famous escapes were captured in early silent films, and he had a brief career appearing in Hollywood films. Fiercely competitive, he sued other performers for copyright infringement, and made a second career publicly exposing fake spiritualists. He was obsessively devoted to his mother, for whom he mourned extravagantly after her death. He died in 1926 of a ruptured appendix, aged 52. Now considered one of the world’s greatest performers, he earns Honorary SuperGay Status for the perverse sexuality of his performances, his well-documented Mummy issues and for commodifying his body as a site of pleasure and suffering.