Poison

:This article is about the dangerous substance. For the band see Poison.

Famous poisonings

See also victims of poisoning

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Confirmed poisonings

• Bhopal Disaster — An accidental release of poisonous gas from a pesticide plant in India that killed over 2,000 people and injured many more.
• Jonestown inhabitants — died from a poisoned drink in a mass suicide/murder: see Jonestown mass suicide
• Love Canal — Buried toxic waste was covered and used as a building site for housing and school in Niagara Falls, New York, resulting in claims of chronic poisoning and a massive environmental cleanup.
• Clare Boothe Luce — Fell ill but did not die; arsenic poisoning
• Georgi Markov — Assassinated in London with ricin
• Socrates — According to Plato, killed by drinking Hemlock (water hemlock, not hemlock the evergreen tree)
• Alan Turing — Apparently committed suicide by painting an apple with Cyanide and taking a bite.
• Viktor Yushchenko — poisoned with dioxin during the Ukrainan elections.

Suspected or rumoured poisonings

• Yasser Arafat — Arafat reputedly died from liver cirrhosis, which may be a consequence of chronic alcohol use or poisoning. Some Arafat supporters feel it is extremely unlikely that Arafat habitually used alcohol (forbidden by Islam), and so suspect poisoning, possibly by the Mossad. (Note that cirrhosis is not necessarily caused by alcohol use, or indeed any poison.)
• Napoleon Bonaparte — some claim he was killed by someone on his staff with arsenic. Evidence is inconclusive.
• Charles Darwin — possibly died due to self-medication with Fowler's solution, one percent potassium arsenite
• Jamestown colonists — Standard historical accounts claim deaths by starvation, but the possibility of arsenic poisoning by rat poison (or of death by Bubonic plague) has also been reported (see here)
• Joseph Stalin — Officially cerebral hemorrhage; but, according to Vyacheslav Molotov's memoirs, Lavrenty Beria claimed to have poisoned Stalin.