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Suicides by cyanide poisoning

  • Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler died by biting a hidden cyanide pill during a British exam. He was dead within 15 minutes.
  • Martin BormannOn the 16th of August 1999, the ashes of Martin Bormann were scattered over the Baltic Sea. German authorities chose open water partly so that neo-Nazis would have no tomb to turn into a monument. More than half a century after the war,…
  • Hermann GöringHermann Göring swallowed cyanide the night before his hanging in October 1946. He had asked for a firing squad.
  • JonestownJonestown, formally the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, was a remote jungle settlement in Guyana, and its name now stands for a single day in November 1978. On the 18th of November, 918 people died in three places: the settlement…
  • Douglas KelleyDouglas McGlashan Kelley, an American Army psychiatrist, once had twenty-two of the highest-ranking men of Nazi Germany sitting in cells and waiting on his judgment. His assignment sounded simple. Decide whether any of them was mentally…
  • Erwin RommelErwin Rommel was forced to swallow cyanide in a German staff car a few miles from his own home.
  • Leonard LakeLeonard Thomas Lake was born on the 29th of October 1945 and died on the 6th of June 1985, four days after police arrested him. He had swallowed cyanide pills that he sewed into his own clothing. Because of that, no jury ever weighed a…
  • Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen.
  • Gilbert N. LewisChemist Gilbert N. Lewis was nominated for the Nobel Prize 41 times and never won. He discovered the covalent bond.
  • Fumimaro KonoeFumimaro Konoe swallowed potassium cyanide rather than face arrest for war crimes.
  • Leopoldo LugonesHow did poet Leopoldo Lugones go from Socialist to supporter of Fascism?

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