The Craziest and Most Famous Cases of Murder, Death, and Suicide by Food

Notorious, insane cases of people who bit the dust thanks to food and drink.
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You probably like to think of food as your friend. It makes your Summer cookouts, keeps your game day parties going, and helps you power through all five seasons of Ally McBeal on Netflix. But don't trust that jerk for a second, because it could end up MURDERING YOU. Think we're just having a paranoid freakout? Then we invite you to read these notorious, insane cases of people who bit the dust thanks to food and drink. After you're done, make sure to swear off midnight snacks forever because that's when you're most vulnerable.

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Photo credit: Wiki Commons

399 BC: Socrates completes his own death sentence by drinking hemlock
After being found guilty of the most serious of offenses (corrupting the youths!), famed Bill and Ted sidekick Socrates was sentenced to death by a jury of his Greek peers. But these old weirdos prescribed an especially twisted execution: The philosopher had to off himself by sipping poisonous hemlock. Socrates did the deed in a room of his pupils and friends, among them his protege Plato, who would chronicle the event in Phaedo. A lot of people painted it, too, as you can see from this version featuring a particularly sassy Socrates.

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Photo credit: Wiki Commons

Late 1400s-early 1500s: The Borgias poison a whole lotta high-powered Italians
This OG mobster clan has a very long and scandalous family tree, but the most famous members were Rodrigo (a.k.a. Pope Alexander VI), his son Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia. Hellbent on staying in power through the Renaissance, the Borgias were famous for spiking numerous political enemies' drinks -- many people even claimed that Lucrezia, who earned a particularly bad rap, had a ring with a secret arsenic stash she wore on the daily for convenient, spontaneous murders. Most historians have since said she took the fall for her dad and bro, who were every bit as nefarious as Jeremy Irons' poses on The Borgias would suggest.

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Late 1800s: Thomas Neill Cream offs several women with strychnine-laced Guinness and pills
Photo credit: Murderpedia

Don't let the baller top hat fool you: This guy was a stone-cold, lady-hating serial killer. A backdoor abortionist by trade, Cream already had multiple murder accusations on his hands when he landed in prison for helping to poison a Chicagoan man. He got out, went to London, then started poisoning prostitutes with strychnine pills that he insisted were medicine, and, in one case, even offered two ladies of the night toxic Guinness bottles. Cream was eventually caught and executed, but he claimed at least seven victims before Scotland Yard caught up. (Probably too busy eating old-timey donuts, amiright??)

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