Tel Aviv, January 01: An Israeli illusionist gave an icy reception to the New Year, emerging at midnight from 66 hours in an 8-tonne block of ice, breaking the record of American magician David Blaine.
Hezi Dean, 29, had himself sealed into a specially constructed transparent ice cube in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, where he apparently stayed for nearly three days wearing just jeans and a thin T-shirt.
At the stroke of midnight, assistants cut open the ice block and removed a weak-looking Dean, taking him straight to a waiting ambulance.
His condition was not immediately clear.
Some 200 onlookers celebrated the arrival of the new decade with Dean, many of the them carrying signs – from the encouraging “Hezi the great” to the more practical “Don’t die Hezi Dean”.
Dean had been attempting to break the record of Blaine, who spent 63 hours in a similar ice cube in New York’s Times Square in 2000.
—Agencies