The strange history of sawing a woman in half...

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​​It started 100 years ago, with a woman in a box. A man had tied her up at the wrists and ankles, fed the ropes through holes at either end of the coffin-like structure, and tied them again outside the box, making movement—let alone escape—seem impossible. The man sealed the container, which was supported on a pair of wooden platforms, and shoved panes of glass and sheets of metal through pre-cut slits and, seemingly, through the woman's body. Then the real work began: He used a large saw to laboriously split the box into two halves. When the sawdust settled, he opened the box and cut the ropes. The woman somehow emerged unharmed.

When you think of mainstream stage magic, odds are good that one iconic illusion comes to mind: the act of sawing a woman in half. The trick was first performed a century ago, at London’s Finsbury Park Empire theater, by a British magician whose stage name was P.T. Selbit. In the decades that followed, it became one of magic’s go-to illusions. A version of the trick even caused a panic in 1956, when BBC viewers thought a magician known as P.C. Sorcar had actually sawn a woman in half on live TV.

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https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/...nfinitescroll1