12. Death by poison
In Welch, West Virginia, “Red” Topham and his friends were looking for a watering hole to cool some beer while camping in the woods. When the men finally found a watering hole to cool their beer, the fun started, but it was short-lived. One by one, the men fell ill after taking a drink from the beer keg, except one. When the man rushed to find help, they discovered that the keg had a dead extremely venomous copperhead snake inside it. But what killed the men was not the venom of the snake, which was deadly only when injected into the bloodstream. Rather it was the rat poison strychnine at the warehouse from which the beer keg was taken. It was suspected that the rat which ingested the poison was eaten by the snake. It hid in one of the beer kegs where it died from the poisoned rat. The men didn’t look into the beer keg before filling it up with the beer. The strychnine in the decomposing body of the snake was released into the beverage, causing it to become extremely toxic.
