First ricin poison assassination

Ricin is a poison that is derived from castor beans and, when injected, causes severe breathing problems, vomiting and diarrhoea leading to death. Several nations have studied its use for military purposes, but it lends itself to injection for individual assassination rather than use as a weapon of mass destruction. On 11 September 1978, Georgi Ivanov Markov, a noted Bulgarian dissident who was critical of the then communist regime in his country and who was working for the BBC World Service, was assassinated in London, UK, by means of a micro-engineered pellet the size of a pinhead containing ricin. It was fired into his leg by an umbrella. Fortunately, he was able to describe the circumstance of the attack, which led pathologists, later, to find the pellet.