He was born and raised in Toronto before dropping out of school to join a carnival and do magic tricks and was known world wide as the Amazing Randi.
Randall James Hamilton Zwinge has died at his home in South Florida. No cause was released by his educational foundation but it’s known he’d been treated for cancer and heart problems in recent years.
He was known as the “magician’s magician,” although he preferred the term “conjurer” and later on in his career, “investigator.” He spent decades exposing those who claimed to have supernatural powers and who practiced the very trickery that he himself had perfected. He called them ‘charlatans.”
Among his accomplishments; freeing himself from straitjackets over Niagara Falls and guesting 32 times on the “Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”
He was also one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal.