Magic at War

This is the amazing survival story of Miss Blanche (aka Ruth Iris Wachsmann) who was one of the leading female magicians in pre-war Europe. An expert manipulator, she headlined in venues across the continent, until war intervened... Ruth Iris Wachsmann was a German Jew. Born in Berlin in 1910, she first trained as a ballerina. In her mid-teens, after seeing a performance by Austro-Hungarian magician Larette (Cornelius Hauer), she switched from dancing to magic. Wachsmann became Larette's student and she learned the art of manipulation. She could manipulate billiard balls and playing cards, but showed special aptitude for cigarette manipulation. Miss Blanche, performing cigarette manipulation, 1936 (Source: Artefake) Inspired by a brand of cigarettes designed to appeal to female smokers by the Rotterdam-based Vittoria Egyptian Cigarette Company, she adopted the stage name Miss Blanche. Larette was sponsored by Miss Blanche cigarettes and helped promote Wachsmann as another act to ma...

MAGICIAN INVENTS DAY-GLO COLOURS. In 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, a nineteen-year-old American university student was working a summer job at a tomato quality control laboratory, when he fell and was knocked unconscious.  Months later, Robert 'Bob' Switzer awoke from a coma with blurred vision.  To continue his recuperation, Bob's doctor recommended avoiding bright light. Acting on this advice, Switzer's father, a pharmacist, turned his shop’s basement into a darkroom. One day, Bob was playing with an ultraviolet light with his younger brother Joseph. The pair noticed that the some of the organic compounds in his father storeroom glowed brightly under the ultraviolet light. Intrigued, the pair started experimenting with the chemicals, especially with Murine eye wash. They found that by mixing it with an alcohol solution of white shellac paint, they could make a fluorescent yellow paint. The compound appeared white to the naked eye, but under a U.V. light...