After finishing his tour of Australia in May 1910, Houdini loaded his biplane aboard a ship bound for Vancouver and his next engagement. He never flew again, having logged some 20 flights in the Voisin, for a grand total of about an hour in the air.

En route the liner stopped over in Suva in Fiji, and the native divers put on their usual show of diving for coins and catching them in their mouths. Houdini realised that they weren’t catching the coins in their mouths at all, but using their hands, and issued a challenge. He would dive handcuffed against the best local diver, whose hands would be tied with rope, and they’d go for separate coins.

In the water, the Fijian soon gave up, but Houdini freed one hand and grabbed both coins, popping them in his mouth and resurfacing.

In March 2008 the Fiji-based blog Paradise Not Found: Abort, Retry, Fail? had a little fun with this story after coming across my Google Earth visit to Suva.