This month has been one big hazmat spill. An Elvis impersonator from Mississippi was arrested and later released after letters containing the deadly poison ricin were mailed to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a judge. On the other side of the globe, sandwiches spiked with rat or mouse poison were eaten by workers for a German car-parts company, leaving dozens scared but apparently uninjured. Meanwhile, concerns grew that the Syrian government may be using chemical weapons in its war against rebels. And if that wasn't enough, Netflix announced a new series called "Hemlock Grove." Here are 10 strong doses about poison:
1 In August 1982, a 30-year-old Navy lieutenant named George Prior embarked on a healthy activity, playing 36 holes of golf at the Army-Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va. Within weeks, four-fifths of his skin had peeled off and his organs were failing. After his death, the culprit was identified as a fungicide named Daconil that had been sprayed on the golf course.
2 Chocolate is poisonous to dogs because it contains caffeine and a related chemical called theobromine, which your pet can't metabolize fast enough. While a human might get a slight buzz for just a few minutes, a dog that eats too much chocolate (the darker the worse) will be affected for hours, possibly leading to heart failure. Another food that is selectively poisonous: avocados for most pet birds.
3 Mr. Yuk, the cartoon character with his tongue sticking out who appears on poisonous products to signal their danger, was developed at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. A more traditional warning symbol, the skull and crossbones, wasn't considered effective in Pittsburgh because of worries that it would remind children of the Pirates baseball team.
4 Arsenic has long been known as a killer — and a cure. Charles Darwin, who used an arsenic product to treat skin outbreaks, often complained of physical ailments, and medical historians note that many of his symptoms match those of arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was an effective treatment for syphilis, and was used by Karen Blixen, who wrote "Out of Africa" under the name Isak Dinesen. Some have theorized that plotters slowly poisoned Napoleon Bonaparte with arsenic, and indeed hair taken from him at his death showed high levels of the poison. But studies of Napoleon's hair samples from many years earlier also showed high levels, suggesting that there was no murder conspiracy and that the arsenic may have come from hair ointment, gunpowder or wallpaper paste.
5 America's war in Vietnam might never have happened if the Hanoi poison plot of 1908 had succeeded. Vietnamese rebels sought to kill the French garrison in Hanoi by spiking their dinners, but they used the wrong poison or the wrong amount, leaving 200 soldiers ill but still able to defend themselves. The revolt fell apart, 13 plotters were executed, and the French stayed in control, later replaced by the Americans.
6 When the Tribune reported on Feb. 11, 1916, the shocking attempt by an anarchist to kill many of Chicago's most prominent figures, including Archbishop George Mundelein and Illinois Gov. Edward Dunne, by poisoning them with chicken soup, it wasn't the only toxic story on the front page. Also that day, readers learned of the tragic death in Lake Forest of a high school senior named Marion Lambert. The girl, whose boyfriend would be acquitted of trying to kill her with cyanide, would live on in local ghost stories about motorists driving Sheridan Road seeing "a girl in the snow."
7 In the National Football League, a free agent's team has the right to match another team's offer — if it can. But in 2006, the Minnesota Vikings found an ingenious — or underhanded — way to wrench Steve Hutchinson from the Seattle Seahawks. They offered Hutchinson $49 million with a poison-pill provision that guaranteed the full amount of the contract if he wasn't the highest paid offensive lineman on their team, knowing Seattle wouldn't make a matching counteroffer because it was already paying another lineman more. The Seahawks retaliated by offering Vikings wide receiver Nate Burleson a back-loaded $49 million contract that guaranteed the full amount if he played at least five games in the state of Minnesota, something the Vikings, who play eight games a year in Minneapolis, clearly wouldn't match. Such contract shenanigans are no longer allowed in the NFL.
8 A meteorite landed in Peru near Lake Titicaca in 2007, and fumes from the crater sickened dozens of villagers. Some speculated that the problem might be akin to the fictional Andromeda Strain, a toxic microbe from space. But ultimately, scientists concluded that heat from the meteorite activated arsenic in an underground water supply, creating a sickening steam.
9 Tillie Klimek was a serial husband poisoner not known for her subtlety. In 1922, when her fourth husband was hospitalized with a mysterious illness just a year after her third husband had died, Chicago officials got suspicious. During her trial for killing her third husband, neighbors testified that while he was sick she joked about the coffin she was going to get for him and what she would wear to his funeral. Though she was convicted of just the one murder, officials linked her to the arsenic deaths of husbands No. 1 and No. 2, a boyfriend and at least two cousins. She had taken life insurance policies out on all her husbands, including the fourth, who survived.
10 Amazon tribes made their arrows more deadly by bathing the tips in toxic secretions from frogs. Some tribes would pin down the poisonous frogs and rub arrows on the animals' skin. But the Choco people of Colombia instead roasted the frogs and caught the drippings in a bottle, allowing for easy dipping of their arrows.
Mark Jacob is a deputy metro editor at the Tribune; Stephan Benzkofer is the Tribune's weekend editor.
Sources: "Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925" by David G. Marr; "The Arsenic Century" by James C. Whorton; "Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller" by Judith Thurman; "Principles of Clinical Toxicology" edited by J. Douglas Bricker; "Is Arsenic an Aphrodisiac?" edited by William R. Cullen; "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs" by Adrienne Mayor; New Scientist; Chicago Tribune archives; St. Paul Pioneer Press; huffingtonpost.com; snopes.com; petmd.com; aspca.org.