La Colmena: List of poisonings

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This is a list of poisonings in chronological order of victim. It also includes confirmed attempted and fictional poisonings. Many of the people listed here committed or attempted to commit suicide by poison; others were poisoned by others.

Non-fiction

Fatal poisonings

Socrates (d. 399 BC), Greek philosopher — According to Plato, sentenced to kill himself by drinking poison hemlock
Artaxerxes III (d. 338 BC), Persian king, poisoned by his vizier Bagoas
Artaxerxes IV (d. 336 BC), Persian king, poisoned by his vizier Bagoas
Bagoas (d. 336 BC), Persian vizier and king-maker, poisoned by Darius III
Demosthenes (d. 322 BC) Athenian politician
Chandragupta Maurya's queen Durdhara (d. 320 BC) was accidentally poisoned when she ate poisoned food meant for the emperor who was immune
Aratus of Sicyon (d. 213 BC), leader of Sicyon and of the Achaean League
Antipater the Idumaean (d. 43 BC), father of Herod the Great
Cleopatra VII of Egypt (d. 30 BC), poisoned herself with an asp’s bite
Julius Caesar Drusus (d. 23), son of Tiberius
Emperor Hui of Jin China (d. 304)
Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), caliph
Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (d. 720), umayyad caliph
Musa al-Kazim (d. 799), Shia Imam
Romanus II (d. 963), Byzantine Emperor
Alan III, Duke of Brittany (d. 1040)
Constantine II of Armenia (d. 1129)
Alphonse I, Count of Toulouse (d. 1148)
Baldwin III of Jerusalem (d. 1162)
Blanche of Bourbon (d. 1361), first wife of King Pedro of Castile
Louis, Count of Gravina (d. 1362)
Robert, Count of Eu (d. 1387)
Ladislaus, King of Naples (d. 1414)
Dmitry Shemyaka (d. 1453), Grand Duke of Moscow; poisoned with arsenic by Vasily Tyomniy's agents in Great Novgorod
Margaret Drummond (d. 1502), mistress of King James IV of Scotland
Timoji (d.1512), Hindu privateer and Portuguese ally
Juan Ponce de León (d. 1521), Spanish conquistador; after being wounded by a poisoned arrow
Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky (d. 1610), Russian general and statesman
Yamada Nagamasa (d. 1630), Japanese adventurer
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (d.1740), ate poisonous mushrooms
Johann Schobert (d.1767), German composer, ate poisonous mushrooms believing them to be edible
Bradford sweets poisoning (1858)
Olive Thomas (d. 1920), Silent film actress, accidentally ingested a large dose of mercury(II) chloride
Madge Oberholtzer (d. 1925) rape victim of KKK leader D. C. Stephenson, mercury(II) chloride
Nestor Lakoba (d. 1936), Abkhaz Communist leader, was poisoned by NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria
Abram Slutsky (d.1938), head of Soviet spy service, poisoned with hydrogen cyanide by NKVD
Nikolai Koltsov (d. 1940), famous Russian biologist, was poisoned by secret police NKVD
Erwin Rommel (d. 1944) German general
Adolf Hitler (d. 1945) cyanide and gunshot simultaneously before capture
Eva Hitler (née Braun) (d. 1945) suicide by cyanide capsule at Adolf Hitler's side
The Goebbels children (d. 1945), poisoned by their parents Magda and Joseph Goebbels (who then killed themselves shortly afterwards by poison and gun shots before capture)
Heinrich Himmler (d. 1945), leader of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS); suicide by cyanide capsule after being captured
Odilo Globocnik (d. 1945)
Hermann Göring (d.1946), leader of the Nazi Luftwaffe; suicide by cyanide capsule, long after being captured and only hours before his hanging was to take place
Theodore Romzha, a Bishop of the Greek Catholic Church, was poisoned in 1947 with injection of curare on the order from Nikita Khrushchev
Alan Turing (d. 1954), British mathematician — Apparently committed suicide by injecting an apple with cyanide and taking a bite.
Stepan Bandera (d. 1959) poisoned by a cyanide capsule shot from a gun by KGB agents
Bandō Mitsugorō VIII (d. 1975), Japanese kabuki actor, ate four livers of fugu fish
A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was poisoned by his "disciples" to death. Sister of Prabhupada (Pishima) confirmed poisoning [1].
Jayanta Hazarika (d. 1977), Assamese singer and musician
Georgi Markov (d. 1978), Bulgarian dissident, — Assassinated in London with ricin
Peoples Temple cult-members (1978), over 900 killed by cyanide-laced punch at Jonestown.
Love Canal (up to 1978) — 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.
Bhopal Disaster (1984) — An accidental release of poisonous gas from a pesticide plant in India that killed over 10,000 people and injured many more.
Matsumoto incident, June 27, 1994, sarin gas attack carried out by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. 7 killed, approximately 200 injured.
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, March 20, 1995, carried out by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. 12 killed, 1034 injured.
Marshall Applewhite (d. 1997); cult suicide
Ibn al-Khattab (d. 2002), a Sunni Jihadi fighter, died from a poisoned letter sent by Russian FSB agency
Roman Tsepov (d. 2004), Russian businessman poisoned by unspecified radioactive material
Alexander Litvinenko (d. 2006), Russian ex-spy and investigator, died three weeks after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210
Zamfara State lead poisoning epidemic, March - June 2010, in Zamfara State, Nigeria, deaths at least 163 people.

Non-fatal poisonings

Hafizullah Amin, the second President of Afghanistan, was poisoned by a Soviet agent in 1979.
Alexander Dubček, a Slovak politician, survived an attempt to poison him with Strontium-90 in 1968
Nikolay Khokhlov was poisoned by radioactive thallium in Germany in 1957 for refusing to work as a KGB assassin
Gulf War syndrome, a multisymptom disorder that was caused by exposure to toxic substances during the Gulf War, 1991.
Zhu Ling, Chinese university student poisoned with thallium in 1995. Suspect never charged.
Clare Boothe Luce (1956) — Fell ill but did not die; arsenic poisoning
Khaled Meshal, Hamas Leader, survived being poisoned by Israeli assassins. The King of Jordan ordered the capture of the assassins, two of which were caught, and an antidote was supplied by Israel for their release.
Anna Politkovskaya was poisoned during her flight to Beslan in 2004
Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, survived being poisoned with potassium cyanide, as well as being shot, bludgeoned, and being thrown into a frozen river before he finally died by drowning.
Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian politician, poisoned with dioxin during the 2004 electoral campaign.
Viktor Kalashnikov, Russian ex-KGB Colonel, and his wife poisoned with mercury in November 2010.

Alleged poisonings

Alexander the Great
Augustus (d. 14), Roman Emperor, with poisoned figs by his wife Livia
Barbara Radziwiłł (d. 1551), Queen of Poland
Boudica, Queen of the Iceni and leader of the rebellion against Roman rule in Britain, suicide by poison according to Tacitus; Dio Cassius claims natural illness
Charles Darwin — possibly died due to self-medication with Fowler's solution, one percent potassium arsenite
Claudius (d. 54), Roman Emperor, by his wife Agrippina the Younger
Germanicus (d. 19), Roman general
Constance of Normandy (d. 1090), daughter of King William I of England
Hanoi Poison Plot. In 1908, a group of local Vietnameses tried to poison the entire French colonial army's garrison in the Citadel of Hanoi (today Vietnam)
Huo Yuanjia (d. 1910), wushu master and Chinese national hero, arsenic
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 ^[1]
King John of England, with peaches
Mithridates VI of Pontus
Mozart with antimony
Lal Bahadur Shastri
King Eric XIV of Sweden (d. 1577), according to folklore killed from poisoning by arsenic hidden in pea soup
Napoleon Bonaparte — some claim he was killed by someone on his staff with arsenic. Evidence is inconclusive.
Pope Benedict XI (d. 1304)
Pope Pius VIII (d. 1830)
Ptolemy XIV of Egypt (d. 44 BC), if so, by his sister Cleopatra
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (d. 1612)
Tycho Brahe (d. 1601), Danish astronomer
Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy (d.1637)
Stefan Dusan (d. 1355), Serbian king
John Gallagher Montgomery (d. 1857), U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania
Emperor Gojong of Korea, allegedly poisoned by the Japanese
Maxim Gorky (d. 1936), Russian writer. NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda admitted at the Trial of the Twenty One that he ordered to poison Gorky and his son.
Robert Johnson (d. 1938), American musician
Raoul Wallenberg (d. presumably in 1947), a Swedish humanitarian, who save tens of thousands of Jews in World War II, was reportedly poisoned in Lubyanka prison by Grigory Mairanovsky
Joseph Stalin (d. 1953) — Officially cerebral hemorrhage; but, according to Vyacheslav Molotov's memoirs and historians Radzinsky and Antonov-Ovseenko, Stalin was poisoned on Lavrenty Beria's orders
Vasili Blokhin (d. 1955), former executioner of NKVD
João Goulart (d. 1976), former Brazilian president ousted by 1964 coup d'état.
Carlos Lacerda (d. 1977), Brazilian journalist and presidential nominee.
Pope John Paul I (d. 1978), (unconfirmed)
Yuri Shchekochikhin (d. 2003), Russian investigative journalist, died presumably from poisoning by radioactive thallium
Yasser Arafat (d. 2004) — Arafat reputedly died from liver cirrhosis, which may be a consequence of chronic alcohol use or poisoning. Some Arafat supporters feel it is unlikely that Arafat habitually used alcohol (forbidden by Islam), and so suspect poisoning. However, it is also important to note that cirrhosis is not necessarily caused by alcohol use, or indeed any poison at all.
Ardeshir Hosseinpour (d. 2007), Iranian nuclear scientist, possibly poisoned/assassinated by Mossad: death by "radioactive poisoning" or "gas poisoning"^[2]^[3]^[4] (unconfirmed)
Nadezhda Tylik, mother of a victim of the 2000 Kursk submarine explosion, sedated against her will by the Russian authorities during a press conference.
Zachary Taylor, was theorized by author Clara Rising that his milk was poisoned during an independence day celebration.

Poisoners

Locusta, professional poisoner hired by Roman emperor Nero and his mother Agrippa for several murders.
Dr John Bodkin Adams, British doctor acquitted in 1957 but suspected of killing 163 patients via morphia and barbiturates.^[5]
Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in the 1990s often used poisons for murder, including chemical weapons such as VX and Sarin.
Mary Ann Cotton, 19th-century woman who poisoned family members for financial gain.
Thomas Neill Cream (d. 1892), British serial killer.
Nannie Doss, black widow.
Anna Marie Hahn (executed 1938), American serial killer.
Genene Jones, homicidal nurse.
Grigory Mairanovsky, who received Soviet PhD degree for testing poisons on political prisoners.
Stella Nickell, who used cyanide-laced Excedrin to kill her husband and another woman in suburban Seattle in 1986.
Vera Renczi, Romanian serial killer who used arsenic to kill two husbands, a son, and 32 suitors.
Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s.
Michael Swango, American physician and surgeon, who fatally poisoned at least thirty of his patients and colleagues.
Graham Frederick Young (d. 1990), British serial killer.
Daisuke Mori, Japanese nurse convicted of one murder and four attempted murders by muscle relaxant.
Harold Shipman (d. 2004), English general practitioner and one of the most prolific known serial killers in modern history.