On This Day in History, April 4: Magic Moments for a Brooklyn Boy
Magician David Blaine was born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1973. He was encouraged by his mother, Petrie White, to become a master of magic. At the age of 4, he saw a magician perform in a subway and he decided to buy his first trick from a Disney shop — the pencil through the card trick.
He has since moved on to far more sophisticated and physically demanding tricks and has been called a modern-day Houdini.
On April 5, 1999, Blaine buried himself alive for a week under a 6-foot-deep Plexiglas tank filled with 4,000 pounds of water.