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America’s First Serial Killers and Many More Deadly Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan September 6, 2020 35 min

Train - Train robbery — History's first peacetime passenger train robbery. CBS News

25. Deadly Freedom

Seventeenth century vial with an image of St. Nicholas of Bari – the type of vial in which Aqua Tofana was sold. Mike Dash History

A journal further described the typical steps whereby a recent widow who had benefited from Tofana’s deadly toxin would move on: “To save her fair fame, the wife would demand a post-mortem examination. Result, nothing — except that the woman was able to pose as a slandered innocent, and then it would be remembered that her husband died without either pain, inflammation, fever, or spasms.

If, after this, the woman within a year or two formed a now connection, nobody could blame her; for, everything considered, it would be a sore trial for her to continue to bear the name of a man whose relatives had accused her of poisoning him.” Free and clear of an unwanted hubby, the new widow could not restart her life afresh.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.