January 19: Adelaide's Bullet Catch

A month after her husband’s death, on this day in 1897, Adelaide Herrmann fulfilled Alexander Herrmann’s promised engagement by performing the famous Bullet Catch on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Six soldiers fired their rifles at Adelaide; she stopped the marked bullets against a china plate, and then had the marks verified. The feat was a spectacular way to establish her own career in magic. Over the years, she repeated the trick several times. William Robinson, her famous assistant, watched from the wings before he attempted the trick years later as Chung Ling Soo.