In 1912, Harry Houdini was lowered into the East River in a crate wrapped in chains. The crowd of spectators gasped; reporters pulled out their stopwatches. Houdini was out in less than a minute. The resulting media blitz established him forever as the world's greatest escape artist; on stage, Houdini subjected himself to the Water Torture Cell, being buried aive and other perils of his own design. Throughout his rise from Hungarian immigrant to international star, Houdini confronted humanity's greatest fears - entrapment, pain, death - and emerged victorious.

For 40 years, a new religion called spiritualism affected the nation as no other ever had. Abraham Lincoln, P.T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass, senators, and scientists argued over the discoveries of the spirit world as revealed through mediums. Congress debated whether to provide $40,000 to research the feasibility of using the new wireless technology to reach the other world. But by 1880, as one spectacular fraud after another was revealed, the movement began to fade.