Think History Is Set in Stone? These 5 Historical Conspiracy Theories May Surprise You!

3) President Taylor’s Death

After eating fruits and drinking milk one hot summer’s day, President Zachary Taylor fell ill and doctors struggled to find ways to help him. On July 9, 1850, the president succumbed to what doctors were calling cholera, after being treated with mercury and opium by his doctors. For a man in otherwise seemingly-good health to die so suddenly has remained a mystery for these many years.

One retired Florida humanities professor, Clara Rising, thought she smelled a conspiracy. Rising suspected that Taylor’s political opponents (most notably those who wanted slavery in every state) had been out to get the president. The most likely scenario was arsenic poisoning, since some of his symptoms fit. In 1991, Taylor’s body was exhumed after Rising had gained permission from his descendants. During post-mortem testing 140 years after his death, many compounds would have been hard to detect. But, arsenic remains in the nails and hair.

Testing found no arsenic, but that does not mean that the president was not poisoned. Milk sickness is believed to have claimed the life of Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. The cause of milk sickness was not identified until 1928 when a Shawnee woman gave a doctor the lead on a poisonous plant that grew wild. Tremetol enters the blood of a person who has drunk milk from cows that have grazed on the poisonous snakeroot plant, causing tremors, severe gastrointestinal disruptions, and coma or death.

Whatever did kill him, it has been theorized that the medical treatment he received probably did not help his condition.

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