David Blaine – “Above the Below” (2003)

On 5 September 2003, American magician and illusionist David Blaine began an endurance stunt in which he was sealed inside a transparent 3 feet (0.9 metres) by 7 feet (2.1 metres) by 7 feet (2.1 metres) Plexiglas box suspended by a crane 30 feet (9.1 metres) in the air on the south bank of the River Thames in London.

A webcam was installed inside the box so that viewers could observe his progress.

The stunt lasted 44 days, during which Blaine drank 4.5 litres of water per day and ate nothing.

However, the reverence with which he was usually treated was conspicuously absent from the cynical crowds below, who tried their best to keep the nappy-clad showman awake day and night by bombarding his box with paint bombs, eggs and golf balls.

One morning, Blaine awoke to the sound of drumming.

“We were watching him at home on TV, and it was really dull, so we thought we would come down and liven things up,” 21-year-old Shiraz Azam told London’s Evening Standard. “I wanted to wake him up.”

A McDonald’s hamburger was flown up to the box by a remote-controlled helicopter as a taunt, and onlookers teased him by cooking food underneath him.

One man was charged with trying to sabotage Blaine’s lifesaving water supply.

Despite dire warnings from doctors about what the starvation must be doing to his body, Blaine stuck out his apparently genuine ordeal and walked free from his box 44 days later on 19 October, sobbing to cameras that, “This has been one of the most important experiences in my life”.

He was subsequently hospitalised, having lost 24.5 kg (54 lb)‍.

He had hypophosphatemia and fluid retention, and had to undergo careful, clinically-supervised refeeding.

A year later, 50-year-old Chinese herbalist Chen Jianmin fasted inside a glass box suspended 46 feet (14 metres) in the air for 49 days, outlasting the thirty-year-old American by five days.