Early Life
Randi was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Marie Alice (née Paradis) and George Randall Zwinge. He has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone, Sr and reading magic books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again. Although a brilliant student, Randi often skipped classes, and, at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practiced as a mentalist at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition, and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press. In his twenties, Randi posed as a psychic to establish that they were actually doing simple tricks and briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid Midnight under the name "Zo-ran," by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column. In his thirties, Randi worked in Philippine night clubs and all across Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural. One of his earliest reported experiences is that of seeing an evangelist using a version of the "one-ahead" technique to convince churchgoers of his divine powers.
Read more about this topic: James Randi
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)