Name your poison
★ LIKE something from a movie plot itself, the mystery case which saw 80 of the cast and crew of Titanic coming down with mass poisoning from psychedelic clam chowder could soon be solved. As we revealed yesterday, new information is set to be released in Canada about the incident which hit director James Cameron and actor Bill Paxton, who played treasure hunter Brock Lovett on the search for the Heart of the Ocean necklace.
★ Here KIM CARR looks at 10 cases of poisoning from history…
1 The founder of modern computing and AI pioneer Alan Turing helped code crack during WW2 for the Allies but died from cyanide poisoning shortly after visiting a fortune teller. He was chemically castrated after being convicted of gross indecency when he was found to be in a same-sex relationship in 1952 and lost his security clearance. Although it was first thought he took his own life, his mum disputed the claim reckoning it was an accident as he was known to be lax with safety around chemicals and would taste them to identify them. Then, in 2009, PM Gordon Brown made a public apology for how Turing was treated.
2 The last pharaoh Cleopatra was 39 when she took her own life, it’s thought by letting an asp – the symbol of divine royalty – bite her and let it’s poison run through her veins. The Egyptian queen was said to not want to face humiliation after the Battle of Actium in 31BC.
3 While battling stomach cancer Napoleon Bonaparte met his maker the day after a compound containing mercury was used as medicine. The poisoning is considered to have sped up his passing.
4 Her despot husband Adolf Hitler used a gun to take his own life as he realised he was losing WW2, but wife Eva Braun took a cyanide pill to avoid being captured.
5 The famous philosopher of ancient Greece, Socrates, right, was convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, left, a poisonous plant.
6 Silent film star Olive Thomas died after accidentally poisoning herself by drinking a dose of medication prescribed to treat her husband’s syphilis.
7 Chinese emperor Guangxu, said to be behind modern reforms and a move towards capitalism, was four when he took the throne and died at 37 in 1908 with high levels of arsenic found in his body.
8 Controversial Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, an advisor of Tsar Nicholas II who claimed to have healing powers, survived being poisoned when his food and drink was laced with potassium cyanide. He was later shot dead by Prince Felix Yusupov who had ordered the wine and cakes be tampered with.
9 Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León was the first European to discover Florida and died when an arrow poisoned with the sap of the manchineel tree went through one of his thighs.
10 Ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, played on screen by David Tennant in an ITV1 drama in 2022, died three weeks after radioactive polonium poisoned him.