The murder of Alexei Navalny is part of Russia’s macabre fascination with poisons A gallop through history of poisonings—from hemlock, to mustard gas, to Polonium-210, to dart frog poison

The murder of Alexei Navalny is part of Russia’s macabre fascination with poisons A gallop through history of poisonings—from hemlock, to mustard gas, to Polonium-210, to dart frog poison

Poisoning one’s political rivals has a long history. In 399 B.C., an Athenian court found Socrates guilty of “impiety and the corruption of youth” and ordered him to drink a fatal dose of hemlock.  In 338 and 336 B.C., in Persia, Artaxerxes III and IV were poisoned by their vizier Bagoas, who was, in turn, poisoned by Darius III. In 71 B.C., Xu Pingjun, Empress of the Western Han dynasty, was poisoned by a rival with aconitum, an herbaceous plan…