From tampered food to umbrella darts, poison has been used to silence many a key figure. Here are some notable — and rumoured — cases of those who died or were injured by poisons.
King John of England, 1199
King John. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
John reigned as king of England from April 6, 1199 until his death. While retreating from the French invasion, John crossed the marshy area known as The Wash and lost many of his possessions, including the Crown Jewels, to the unexpected incoming tide. This loss affected his health and state of mind and he succumbed to dysentery on Oct. 18 or 19, 1216 at Newark. After his death, numerous accounts circulated that he had been killed by poisoned ale, poisoned plums or a surfeit of peaches.
Sir Thomas Overbury, 1613
Sir Thomas Overbury. (Archive photos/Getty Images)
English poet and essayist Sir Thomas Overbury was violently opposed to the budding relationship between his good friend, Lord Rochester, and the young Countess of Essex, whom he described as immodest. Overbury wrote his famous poem His Wife to paint a picture of the virtues a man should seek in his wife. Lady Essex believed the poem was an attempt to prevent her from marrying Rochester, so she orchestrated his imprisonment in the Tower and his poisoning with copper vitriol, a form of sulphuric acid. He died on Sept. 15, 1613. Two months after Overbury's death, the pair were married. A year later, the case went to trial. The countess pleaded guilty but was spared and Rochester was disgraced.
Grigori Rasputin, 1916
A group of Russian nobles decided that mystic Grigori Rasputin's influence over the tsarina made him too dangerous to the empire. So, on Dec. 16, 1916, they lured Rasputin to Prince Felix Yusupov's Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with large doses of cyanide. According to the legend, Rasputin wasn't affected, though he was served enough poison to kill 10 men. Yusupov worried that Rasputin would live until morning, so he shot him in the back. When Yusupov went to check on the body, Rasputin opened his eyes, tried to strangle Yusupov and took off. The nobles shot him three more times, until he fell. When they neared the body, Rasputin was still trying to get up, so they clubbed him into submission. Then they wrapped him in a sheet and threw him into the freezing Neva River. Three days later, when his body was found, the cause of death was determined to be drowning and hypothermia.
Felix-Roland Moumie, 1960
Dr. Felix-Roland Moumie was the exiled leader of the Cameroonian nationalist movement, the Union des Populations du Cameroon. Early in October 1960, he was invited to dinner by William Bechtel, who claimed to be a journalist interested in the UPC's armed struggle against the French-backed regime of Ahmadou Ahidjo. However, Bechtel wasn't just a journalist. He was a member of the "Main Rouge," a French secret service unit charged with killing anti-French and pro-independent African nationalists and their supporters in Europe. Moumie was called to the phone and while he was gone, Bechtel poured a lethal does of thallium into Moumie's aperitif. When Moumie didn't drink it, Bechtel seized on another distraction to pour another dose of thallium into Moumie's wine. Moumie died in hospital on Nov. 3, 1960.
Georgi Markov, 1978
Georgi Markov was a journalist and Bulgarian dissident who often criticized the Bulgarian communist regime on the radio. After two failed assassination attempts by agents of the Bulgarian secret police, Markov was waiting at a London bus stop on Sept. 7, 1978 when he was jabbed in the leg by a man holding an umbrella. That evening, he became feverish and was admitted to hospital, where he died three days later. During Scotland Yard's post mortem, forensic pathologists discovered a tiny metal pellet containing traces of ricin embedded in Markov's calf. While it has been confirmed the KGB was behind the assassination, no one has even been charged.
Khaled Mashal, 1997
In 1997, Mashal was the Jordanian branch chief of Hamas. On Sept. 25, Israeli intelligence officers, under orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entered Jordan with Canadian passports and injected Mashal with a toxic substance. Jordanian authorities arrested two of the 10 agents involved in the attempt. Jordan's King Hussein demanded that Netanyahu turn over the antidote, which the Israeli prime minister refused to do. Eventually, American President Bill Clinton intervened and forced Netanyahu to turn over the antidote. Jordanian authorities later released the agents in exchange for the release of Sheikh Amhed Yassin, Hamas's founder, who was serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.
Yasser Arafat, 2004
Yasser Arafat. (JTV/APTN)
First reports of Yasser Arafat's illness came on Oct. 25, 2004, after he vomited during a meeting. While spokesmen said it was the flu, his condition deteriorated. On Oct. 29, Arafat was taken to the Percy military hospital near Paris. On Nov. 3, he lapsed into an increasingly deepening coma. Arafat died on Nov. 11, at 75. There was suspicion that he was suffering from poisoning or AIDS. One declared cause was cirrhosis of the liver, which supporters claim unlikely, as drinking alcohol often is contrary to Islamic practices. Poisoning remains a popular theory, in part because the leader's wife refused an autopsy.
Viktor Yushchenko, 2004
Viktor Yushchenko. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
During the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko announced that he would run as an independent candidate against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. When Yushchenko became seriously ill in early September, he claimed his illness to be the work of government agents. After the illness, his face became pockmarked, pale and heavily disfigured. Austrian doctors confirmed Yushchenko was poisoned with TCDD dioxin and had more than 1,000 times the usual concentration in his body. Yushchenko has linked the poisoning to a dinner with a group of senior Ukrainian officials, including the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, on the evening before he fell ill.
Alexander Litvinenko, 2006
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was a former spy for the KGB and FSB who fled to Britain in 2000 after spending nine months in a Russian jail. He had been charged with abuse of office, but was acquitted. In 1998, Litvinenko went public with allegations he was ordered to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is exiled in Britain. Litvinenko died Nov. 23 in a London hospital. The ex-spy had a "major dose" of radioactive poison, likely from polonium 210. Experts from the Radiation Protection Division of Britain's Health Protection Agency said to get that much radioactive material in the body, a person would have to have eaten, inhaled or taken it in through a wound. In a statement dictated from his deathbed, Litvinenko accussed Russian President Vladimir Putin of poisoning him, a charge Putin denied.
