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| 1874 |
Ehrich Weiss (Harry Houdini) born to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss and his wife Cecelia on March 24 in Budapest, Hungary. |
| 1878 |
Weiss family joins Rabbi Weiss in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he leads a small Reform congregation. |
| 1883 |
At age nine, Ehrich and some neighborhood friends establish a five-cent circus. Wearing red woolen stockings, he bills himself as "Ehrich, The Prince of the Air." |
| 1887 |
After a series of failures in the Midwest, Rabbi Weiss brings Ehrich with him to New York City, where they live in a boardinghouse on East Seventy-ninth Street. Ehrich works a variety of jobs to help support the family. |
| 1891 |
 Ehrich teams up with Jacob Hyman, a friend from his job at a neckwear cutting firm, in a magic act they call "The Brothers Houdini." Ehrich, known as Ehrie, starts calling himself "Harry Houdini." |
| 1892 |
Rabbi Weiss dies on October 5 at the age of 63. |
| 1893 |
The Brothers Houdini perform on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. |
| 1893 |
Jacob Hyman leaves The Brothers Houdini and is replaced briefly by Harry's brother Theodore, or Dash. That summer, Harry meets fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, and after a three-week courtship Harry and eighteen-year-old "Bess" are married. Bess replaces Dash, and the act becomes known simply as "The Houdinis." |
| 1895 |
 The Houdinis achieve some success with their signature number, "The Metamorphosis," in which they trade places in a locked trunk.
Harry also begins experimenting with public handcuff escapes, including exhibitions for police and reporters. |
| 1898 |
Harry and Bess return to New York to live with his mother. By the end of the year, a frustrated Houdini is considering leaving show business, and mails out a sixteen-page catalogue for "Harry Houdini's School of Magic." |
