Sword Swallower Dan Meyer

Here’s the story in the Huffington Post about Arianna Huffington removing a sword from my throat at the offices of Huffington Post/AOL:

And here’s a video from the national program “Right This Minute” featuring Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of Huffington Post removing a sword from my throat at the offices of Huff Post AOL in New York for World Sword Swallower’s Day 2012:

I had a blast at Ignite Cincinnati!

Ignite’s slogan: “Enlighten us, but do it quick!”

So for Ignite talks, you have only 5 minutes and 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds, which is about enough time to get in one sentence, before the slide advances to the next slide…

So I had about 3:56 to get in 4000 years of sword swallowing and 30 years of my life, and about a minute to swallow 3 swords. I was pretty nervous about trying to get everything in…

Here’s the video:

Just a quick update before I run off to the airport for New York in a few minutes…

I’m looking forward to doing a very interesting lecture this weekend at the well-known Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT for their new exhibition “Art and Science of the Circus”.

For my part, I will be lecturing on the history, as well as the art and science of sword swallowing. The highlight of the exhibit is a collection of swords I loaned to the museum that were swallowed by the world famous “Champion Sword Swallower of the World” Edith Clifford who swallowed them from the 1890s to the early 1900s with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circuses. Clifford created such a sensation that Harry Houdini went to Ringling Brothers to see her perform in person and raved about her in his book “Miracle Mongers and Their Methods”. The highlight of her act was swallowing a giant straight razor, a giant saw, and a bayonet that was shot down her throat by a cannon, and these implements will be the highlight of this lecture.

World Champion Sword Swallower with her Saw

The last time these implements were swallowed, they were in Edith Clifford’s stomach 100 years ago, and her DNA is still on her props!

As the final demonstrations to my lecture, if my throat is up to it, I am going to attempt a historic feat to bridge the past with the present by trying to recreate some of Edith Clifford’s historic feats by attempting to swallow the giant straight razor, her giant saw, and who knows what else into MY stomach… to add my DNA with hers!

The lecture and show is at the Bruce Museum this Sunday, November 14th at 3:00pm. Edith Clifford is still making quite a stiry 100 years later, as the show is already sold out, a lot of media are scheduled to cover the story including AOL News, and as of this morning, there is already a lot of press on the story:

• Greenwich Citizen
• Stamford Advocate
• New Haven Register
• CT Post
• Acorn
• Hartford CT Courant
• New Milford Spectrum

Let me know if you’re in the CT or NYC area and would like to meet up! I hope to be able to post more later if I manage to pull this off!

Or you can keep in touch by following @Halfdan on Twitter for live updates!

Wow! What an AWESOME weekend I had at YEC in Oklahoma City, OK!

I flew into Oklahoma City on Friday afternoon after only 3 hours of sleep. When I arrived at the airport, I called for my ride… They said, “Dan Meyer? We already picked up Dan Meyer this MORNING!”

I said, “That’ funny… I don’t remember it! I just GOT HERE!”

Come to find out, the sound guy for Britt Nicole is named Dan Myers, so they had picked him up about an hour earlier!

I later met him and he was a pretty cool guy! When I got to the Lloyd Noble Center in Tulsa, I enjoyed hanging out in the green room with my friend Illusionist Brock Gill, and Jason Dunn, lead singer for Hawk Nelson! They are both such great guys!… Both of them!

Then on Friday night I was privileged to open for Hawk Nelson by doing fire-eating and the Human Blockhead. Because I had a very short window of time, I kept it all pretty short, and I could tell the audience was pretty freaked out and wondering if I was ever really going to swallow real swords. I teased them and told them to come back tomorrow for some real sword swallowing. But it was fun and I heard lots of great comments from some of the 10,000 kids who were there that night! Then immediately following after me Hawk Nelson went on. Hawk Nelson was AWESOME and ROCKED THE HOUSE!

On Saturday, I finally got to meet one of my favorite Christian artists Britt Nicole! As it turns out, I use two of her songs in my show, and she sang BOTH of them live… JUST BEFORE MY SET! How cool is that? To follow Britt Nicole! As she was coming off stage, I asked her if she would be willing to pull a sword from my throat? “SURE!” she said! I was elated!

So I did a VERY quick version of my show where I swallowed a small sword, a hedge clippers, a giant straight razor, and a few other swords…

Then I asked the audience if they wanted to see Britt Nicole pull a sword from my throat… They loved it! So I called for Britt to come up on stage. She was so gracious and generous… You can tell she has been blessed with a wisdom and maturity well beyond her years!

When it came time to pull the sword out of my throat, I gave her all the details…. You should have seen the look on her face! I think she was a little freaked out!

Here’s video of Britt pullng out the sword!

Christian Artist Britt Nicole pulls sword from Sword Swallower Dan Meyer

Britt was a true professional, did a GREAT job, and was so gracious in not killing me! Thanks a million, Britt!

Then I put on my laser light gloves and did a laser choreography to Britt’s song “GLOW” Even though the haze fog was not too thick and the lights were still up fairly bright, the laser gloves and light saber still seemed to go over pretty well. The cameraman said he could see the light saber glowing through my neck and others said they could see it on the jumbotron!

Video:

If anyone got any photos or video of the show, and ESPECIALLY Britt Nicole pulling the sword out or the glowing sword, please, please PLEASE e-mail me! I really would like to see them and post them here if it’s ok with you!

I made so many great friends at YEC OK! I would LOVE to come back to YEC OK again sometime! If you were there, please follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook!

Had an AWESOME time at Cross N Dagger in Fort Wayne Indiana last weekend! I wasn’t sure what I was getting into performing for a few thousand bikers, and I’m sure THEY weren’t sure what they were getting with a sword swallower, but from the many hugs and tears and great comments I got from the bikers, it seems like it was certainly a perfect fit!

Life Bridge church is a REALLY COOL church - They had an AWESOME worship band that ROCKED, motorcycles up on the stage, they roasted a few hogs, and invited about 2000+ bikers to come in! And they had a weird sword swallower there as well! I guess Pastor Bill really DOES like to do things OUTSIDE the BOX!

After the second show, one of the bikers came back to talk to me. He said he knew there was a God, but he said that my show and message had put him “over the hump” into believing He was real and making a decision to follow Him! He was pretty choked up. So was I!

A few minutes later, I was relating this story to one of the pastors, and as I mentioned the man’s name and told the story, and a lady overheard me. She threw her arms around me and was sobbing in tears, and said she was the man’s wife and had been praying for him to know the Lord for years! She was SO overjoyed that he had made the decision that day, and she kept thanking me and hugging me and crying. It made quite an impact on me!

If you were there, please follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook!

I just got a note on Facebook from a friend who said he just saw me on a TV commercial for the upcoming History Channel documentary “Stan Lee’s SuperHumans!”

This is an eagerly-awaited new series of episodes on History Channel about people who have what may almost be considered “SuperHuman” powers to do the incredible, with my friend Daniel Browning-Smith (Flex the Rubber Boy!) as host. It was great to see Daniel again and work with the production crew from Bristol England. We had a blast filming my episode at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, TN in January, and at our farm in Alabama in February, and there should be some VERY INTERESTING footage in our episode!

According to the History Channel site, the series premieres on The History Channel on Friday, July 30, at 9/8c to 88 Million viewers worldwide. The series airs four 8 minute episodes on Thursday nights in each week’s 50 minute program, and some episodes re-air again later that night.

My Episode #7 is tentatively scheduled to air on

Check your local listing for local times. Let me know if you see the commercials or even see the episode itself! Can’t wait to see how it turns out! Should be HOT!

DAN IN QUEST SCIENCE MAGAZINE

Just found out I am being featured in a multi-page article in QUEST magazine - Quest is a major Dutch Science magazine (won “Magazine of the Year” in 2010!), and Quest publishes over 200,000 copies each month to a readership of 1.1 million readers. The article was written by a great guy, Dutch journalist Rik Kuiper, who I hit it off with while I was speaking at the PINC.11 Conference in Zeist Netherlands in May. If you’re a Dutch reader, please let me know how the article turned out!

http://www.quest-magazine.nl/

Sad news: On the day I received my copies of the magazine in the mail, I also found out that Quest’s Editor-In-Chief died at the young age of 39. What a sad story for such a great magazine. Please keep them in your prayers.

DAN IN SCANNER MAGAZINE

I also just received a copy of the Dutch medical magazine “SCANNER” which features an article on me as well! Scanner is published by Erasmus University in Rotterdam Netherlands and reaches a large audience of medical readers.

DAN IN THE LUTHERAN MAGAZINE

Also look for an article on me in the September 2010 LUTHERAN magazine (formerly “The Lutheran Standard”) written by journalist Jeff Favre. This magazine reaches an audience of 4.7 million ELCA Lutherans and 17,000 Lutheran clergy in over 10,300 ELCA Lutheran congregations around the US! Let me know if you happen to see it or hear of any Lutheran congregations, Bible camps, or Lutheran Colleges who might be interested in having me come and speak/perform!

Sword Swallower Puts God in His Act!

UPCOMING SHOWS

CROSS AND DAGGER
This weekend I’m heading up to Indiana to perform at “Cross and Dagger“ Biker Rally for about 2000 bikers at Life Bridge Church in Fort Wayne. If you’re in the area, definitely stop by and say hi!

http://www.crossndagger.com

OKLAHOMA YEC

Then next week I head off to Oklahoma to perform for about 10,000 Baptist youth with uber-cool magician Brock Gill and Peter Nestler on August 6-7 at the Oklahoma YEC Convention in Oklahoma City. If you’re in Oklahoma City, stop in and see us!

Hope you’re doing well and staying cool!

Stay Sharp, and Keep it REAL!

Dan

Just getting ready to catch my flight to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in a few minutes.

If the volcanic ash is not too bad, I hope to land in Amsterdam on Saturday and spend the weekend there. Then on Monday, I will be traveling to the little Dutch village of Zeist, for a VERY special occasion!

I have been honored to speak at the 11th annual prestigious PINC Conference (PINC stands for People, Ideas, Nature, and Creativity). PINC is like a European version of the well-known TED conference, and the PINC board has invited me along with a small number of other speakers to speak on “out of the box” type topics… like SWORD SWALLOWING! What a HUGE honor! I am really looking forward to this trip and to meeting the other speakers!

Here’s a link to PINC.11

It looks like they have some other interesting speakers and entrepreneurs there as well! I am looking forward to meeting all of them!

After PINC, on Wednesday I will be heading to Rotterdam where I will be speaking at Erasmus University Medical Center with my friends Erwin Kompanje and Kees Moeliker, both fellow Ig Nobel speakers themselves. This should be a fun talk for the doctors and nurses in the area, as this is one of the aspects of my job that I really LOVE!

From Wednesday to Saturday, I will be visiting the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, the Rotterdam Zoo, the Kinderdijk Windmills, and the floating Noah’s Ark replica and museum that is on exhibit in Vianen in the Netherlands! And it looks like I will be doing some media interviews in various magazines, newspapers, and even the TOP Dutch TV show in the Netherlands!

Should be a fun trip!

If you’re on Twitter, please follow me for live updates: @Halfdan

Looking forward to keeping in touch with you, and if you’re in the Netherlands, I’m looking forward to meeting you!

Tot ziens!

Dan
http://danmeyer.tel

Check out some of the new Fluoroscope videos filmed at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville!

The 4th Annual World Sword Swallower’s Day was Saturday, February 27, 2010. As President of the Sword Swallower’s Association International, I had requested sword swallowers around the world to help us celebrate by swallowing a sword at their local Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum.

The results?

We had 22 sword swallowers from around the world (18 men and 4 women) swallow a total of 84 swords at 10 Ripley’s Believe It or Not museums worldwide - a total of over 1658.5 inches of swords or 138.21 feet of steel! Believe It or NOT!

For my part on Saturday, I got to perform at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in Dallas (Grand Prairie), TX, where I swallowed the giant straight razor, the hedge clippers, and 7 swords at once! I even donated one of my favorite swords to their museum, making this the 5th Ripley’s Museum I have performed at that also has a display on me! What an honor! A special treat was to have my friend Paul Salos, the Frank Sinatra impersonator who made through to the finals in America’s Got Talent, come make an appearance, sing a few Sinatra songs, and pull a sword from my throat! Here’s a video from the
Dallas Morning News

The press we got was incredible! We made it on NPR, CBS News, CBS Morning Show, MSNBC News, and we were featured on the front page of AOL News, and on hundreds of radio stations and TV programs! Here’s a national interview I did with CBS News Correspondent Sam Litzinger

Tomorrow morning I will be swallowing a sword live on the Bob and Tom Show at 9:25am ET / 8:25am CST! If you get a chance, listen in!

Next week I’m off to the finals of a talent contest in Branson, MO and from there on to London and the Ig Nobel Tour of the UK, including Scotland, and from there, on to a major TV appearance in Rome, Italy! I’ve gotta say - I LOVE MY WORK!

Thanks for keeping in touch! Stay tuned for more over the next few weeks!

Dan