The Inheritance Powder

I used to write a lot about murder, poison, and arsenic in specific, for both Neatorama and Mental Floss. Then after I was widowed the second time, I pulled back on those subjects lest I gain a reputation of some sort. It's just that those things are very rich sources of stories from history. In this TED-Ed overview we get a brief history of arsenic and its, uh, "traditional" use in dispatching rivals, wealthy ancestors, and inconvenient spouses. That doesn't happen as much these days, or at least we hope it doesn't, because modern chemistry can detect not only the presence of arsenic, but the amount and the day it was ingested in an autopsy.