Thomas Solomon - Accomplishments

Accomplishments

To date (2013), Solomon has escaped from more than 5500 pairs of handcuffs of all different types from all times in history. These include:

Standard issue police restraints,
Time Release Spider Lock,
French "I" Bar restraint,
Australian Letter Cipher Lock,
Lilly Irons (imprisoned the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators)
Various German restraints including Berliners, the Deutsche Polizei, the Dortmunder, Clejusos, and Dollars.
Various British restraints including Darbys, Sheffields and Hiatts.
Various French restraints including the Lapegy and La Massenotte.
Various Italian restraints of the Caribineri.
Various American restraints including Towers, Smith & Wesson and Peerless.
Various Communist bloc restraints including those from Bulgaria, Russia and East Germany.
Solomon is the only escape artist to have escaped from the handcuffs that held the Lincoln
assassination co-conspirator, Lewis Payne (Powell). Also, he has escaped the leg irons that imprisoned Billy the Kid at the Lincoln County Courthouse in 1881.

Solomon has escaped two locked safes in his career, one of them underwater for the British television show, Thomas Solomon: The Escape Artist. Solomon has escaped 19 jails throughout his career in New York City, London, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Trenton and others. Most notable were his escapes from the maximum security prison Pentonville in the UK (that houses IRA prisoners) and from Al Capone's personal cell at Eastern State Penitentiary for his History Channel, pilot special, "No Jail Can Hold Me."

He has accomplished hundreds of straitjacket releases, most notably an escape from the all-leather straitjacket specifically created to thwart him by Menkes Leather Works. He escaped a tightly bound straitjacket in the pouring rain hanging upside down from a tower crane 150 feet above the street in Portland, Oregon in December 2006.