Surprising Relationships Between Historical Figures

Once you have reached the level of the elite, you get introduced to other wealthy and famous people, whether they are in the same field or not. If you are a coveted dinner guest, you'll get to meet other coveted dinner guests. Which can lead to friendships that may go unnoticed, but surprise people when they find out. But there are also cases where one person is famous, and the other is not ...yet. For example, H.P. Lovecraft was paying his dues as a writer when he found himself a ghostwriter for Harry Houdini.  

Harry Houdini was famous the world over for his escape skills, so when he visited Egypt in 1910, the locals knew all about him, and had a surprise in store. A guide took him on the expected sightseeing trek, but then delivered him into the hands of a gang of thugs. They tied him up and dropped him down a shaft in a pyramid, leaving Houdini to pass the test or die in the attempt.

At least, that's the story Houdini liked to tell. But his publishers wanted it written up as a proper story and so dug up a ghostwriter, settling on a young H.P. Lovecraft, who did a little fact-checking and found Houdini had made the whole thing up. So when writing the story, he figured there was no harm in exaggerating things even further, turning it into full-fledged cosmic horror. He wrote that in the bowels of the pyramid, Houdini met hippo-headed men worshiping strange artifacts and an ancient god, and raised the possibility that the guide who betrayed him was a time-traveling pharaoh. Basically, he took a pulpy tale that was pretty illogical already and went full Cthulhu with it.

Houdini liked it, and that started a relationship that lasted for some time. Read the rest of that story, plus those of four others that may surprise you at Cracked.


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