David Merlini

From WikiCover

Hungarian escape artist David Merlini's fascination with magic began at the age of four when he chose to play with locks and handcuffs instead of Legos and action figures. Soon, such restraints became but a joke for the future master of escape and after he was given a magic kit Merlini became instantly enamored with the world of entertainment.

He first mastered the art of escape at Hungary's Island 1995 festival where he was strapped into a straitjacket, then hung upside down from a burning rope thirty feet in the air. Free in less than a hundred seconds, Merlini's next conquest was a chained and padlocked welded steel case. For this amazing escape, he was handcuffed with five sets of regular police handcuffs, locked with sixty pounds of chains, padlocked in a metal cage and then lowered into a locked transparent tank of water. Merlini has also been buried in concrete, and has escaped from a rocket's demolition. This modern day master has managed to marry a love of water and the oceans, with a fascination with danger and escape.

On October 9, 2007, David Merlini will attempt to break the World Record for the longest time under water without air.