David Blaine is known for "magic tricks" that bear a suspicious similarity to fraternity hazing rituals, including being locked in a Plexiglass box and frozen in a block of ice.

After spending summers at the nerd haven of Tannen's Magic summer camp on Islip, Blaine hit the streets with his act. Widespread fame arrived in 1997 with his Street Magic TV special, in which he bit through coins and levitated in front of bugged-out pedestrians. Since then, he's staged a variety of pieces of what he calls "endurance art," i.e., publicity stunts so desperate as to be literally life-threatening: He's been buried alive, frozen in ice, stood on a pillar over Bryant Park for 34 hours, suspended for 44 days in a box over the Thames, locked inside a water-filled bubble outside of Lincoln Center for a week, and hung in a gyroscope near Times Square. [Image via Getty]