The number of pulls of the trigger before a round is expected to discharge is 3. The term Russian roulette was possibly first used in a 1937 short story of the same name by Georges Surdez. Did you ever hear of Russian Roulette? Russian army in Russian woman voice, around 1917 some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, anywhere, at the table, remove a cartridge from the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger.

There were five chances to one that the hammer would set off a live cartridge and blow his brains all over the place. Pennsylvania teenager’s conviction for murder in the second degree as a result of shooting a friend, was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X recalls an incident during his burglary career when he once played Russian roulette, pulling the trigger three times in a row to convince his partners in crime that he was not afraid to die. On December 25, 1954, the American blues musician Johnny Ace killed himself in Texas, after a gun he pointed at his own head discharged. A report in The Washington Post attributed this to Russian roulette. Russian roulette, alone, a few times as a teenager.

On September 10, 1976, Finnish magician Aimo Leikas killed himself in front of a crowd while performing his Russian roulette act. He had been performing the act for about a year, selecting six bullets from a box of assorted live and dummy ammunition. President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was known to have played Russian roulette, alone, on two occasions. Jon-Erik Hexum played Russian roulette with a . 44 Magnum revolver loaded with a blank. PBS claims that William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, had attempted suicide by playing a solo game of Russian roulette.