John Northern Hilliard (1872 - 1935) was a Rochester newspaper man and clever amateur magician.
Biography
Hilliard was dramatic critic with The Chicago Herald and later on the staff of The Rochester (N. Y.) Post Express. After moving to New York, he met Howard Thurston while a reporter on The New York World and became interested in magic. John was credited with securing the master magician with his first engagement on the stage. Several years later Thurston induced Hilliard to give up his newspaper work and become his personal representative.
With the urging of Floyd G. Thayer, John starting writing for Thayer's Magical Bulletin magazine. In 1925, Hilliard became an advance man for The Thurston show. During this time he accumulated notes on what he was learning about magic. In 1932, Carl Waring Jones urged him to turn his notes into a book, offering to publish it. But Hilliard suddenly died of a heart attack in 1935 while in a hotel room in Indianapolis.
1638 - Claude-Gaspar Bachet, a mathematician who wrote books on mathematical puzzles, dies in Bourg-en-Bresse, France.
1889 - Paul Razoux, who would become the Dean of SAM Assembly No. 9, is born in Boston.
1908 - Edward Maro, one of the first successful headlining magician on the Lyceum and Chautauqua circuits who billed himself as Billed as the "Prince of Magic", dies.
1933 - A séance was held that night at Hanussen's Palace of the Occult.
1949 - John B. Handy, founder of the Hill City Magicos in Lynchburg, Virginia dies.
1980 - William Turner, a writer of Western novels and amateur magician, dies.
