Zachary Taylor

On July 4, 1850, U.S. President Zachary Taylor attended an Independence Day celebration where he ate well - snacking on fresh cherries and creamy milk, sampling a variety of treats pressed on him by enthusiastic well-wishers. Five days later, Taylor was dead of a severe attack of gastroenteritis. And for decades afterward, suspicions lingered that one of those so-called well-wishers had been an assassin, had mixed arsenic into a slice of pie or dish of ice cream. A high dose of the metallic poison arsenic can also bring on severe nausea and painful stomach cramps. Finally, in 1991, one of…