Here's an astonishing coincidence. Joshua Bell was not the first famous violinist to try this stunt. Jacques Gordon did it in Chicago in 1930. And neither Joshua Bell nor Gene Weingarten—the Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his article about Bell—knew about it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401153.html