By Nathan Birch October 28, 2008

The Legend:

Demonstrating why guidance counselors rarely recommend this line of work, an escape artist fails to follow through on his name and dies in front of a live audience. Rumors like these are often spread by the escapists themselves to up the element of danger (after all, why do we watch if not for the off chance we might see David Blaine die?).

The Truth:

Despite the illusion of danger, escape artists rarely die or even get injured performing a stunt. Most sensible people are going to take every damned possible safety precaution when they're straight-jacketed and lowered into a shark tank wearing a meat codpiece. But Joseph "Amazing Joe" Burrus wasn't most people.

Ironically, given what would take place, Burrus' stunt was to involve him escaping from his own grave. Amazing Joe was shackled in a clear plastic coffin, lowered into a seven foot-deep grave. Three feet of soil was shoveled on him and then as icing on this cake of idiocy, the rest of the hole was filled with wet concrete. All seemed to be going well until, in a result absolutely anyone could have predicted, the plastic coffin collapsed, crushing Joe for good.

While you have to commend Burrus for saving a gravedigger the work of digging a new hole for him, there was some evidence he knew the trick wouldn't work. His accident took place on the anniversary of his idol, the Great Houdini's death, suggesting he may have killed himself on purpose. In which case it was awful decent of him to do it at "Blackbeard's Family Fun Center" in front of as many kids as possible, including his own.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16721_p2.html