Originally published at: Woman finds Houdini posters forgotten in her walls | Boing Boing
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The best thing of this type I ever found was an advertisement for ice delivery in an old carriage house/garage built in 1913. The phone number had only 5 digits.
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I remember when they were still compensating for going to 7 with a word in front of the 5 digits, like WAlnut 5-4321 rather than 925-4321.
Disappointed that the posters didn’t escape.
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I didn’t know Houdini got his Masters in Mystifying. I thought he just had a B.S. degree.
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I gotta admit that’s pretty damn rad, glad the posters were able to be saved 
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not so much compensation as mnemonic device.
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Tearing down/into things in certain locations can lead to interesting finds:
A renovation of a small business on the ‘main’ street near my old B’klyn stomping grounds revealed a very early 20th century store sign (hidden beneath modern signage). I don’t recall exactly the owner’s name on the sign, but it was one of those impossibly long and difficult to pronounce German/Austrian family names… the kind that gets changed along the way in the US.
In the mid-90s, my brother discovered a bolt-action German rifle (M98; pre-WWII) in the basement of his B’klyn home. After moving out much of the previous owner’s stuff down there, he discovered a small jagged opening in a back wall. The opening revealed an enclosed space (located underneath the attached back-of-the-house horse-and-buggy days stable; too small to be of use as a garage)… and the rifle. A bit of research on my end showed that the previous to last owners (parents with one child) had immigrated from Lithuania. My Mom got a kick out of the fact that the mother and she share the same first name. Olga.
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I one found a gallon jar of pickled pigs feet in the back of a deep kitchen cabinet at a house in Austin.
“The Greatest Entertainment of All Times”
Well that’s quite a bold claim.
He was one of the most high profile figures in entertainment at the time.
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Aw man, I never find anything good.
I do remember a few years ago someone found an Action Comics #1 tucked inside of news papers that were inside a wall for insulation.
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… and you considered that a good find?
Who wouldn’t?
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That probably depends not only on the age of the home, but the location.
Places where things can turn up: Before I left for CA, I helped my brother remodel the dining room at his place. We replaced all the molding. Behind a section of original pieces we found a rolled up newspaper from the 1940s. Still scratching my head over that one.
And no, it wasn’t a locked safe hidden at the back of a closet.
Oh I know I’m just amused thinking along the lines of one of those asides in Hitchhiker’s Guide- “Unknown to Houdini, in 946 Olaf’s 38 hour recitation of the norse sagas was slightly more entertaining, never to be in turn surpassed until Prince’s Super Bowl halftime show”
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