- Aug 11, 2003
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Originally posted by: klah
:roll:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010112.html
the first known use of the term was Harry Houdini's "Chinese Water Torture Cell," a stunt introduced circa 1903 in which Houdini was lowered into a tank of water upside down and had to come out alive. Popik says the drip-drip-drip method of torture, not referred to as "Chinese," is described in Brian Innes's The History of Torture (1998) as having been invented by one Hippolytus de Marsiliis in 16th-century Italy. At some point subsequent to 1903, presumably, someone conflated Houdini's trick with de Marsiliis's torture, and the two have been linked ever since.
Chinese checkers are also not Chinese, the were invented in England in the 1800's.
Good shyt!.....damn Asian stereotypes....
