Analysis of hair samples of his contemporaries have also shown a striking amount of arsenic, implying nothing suspicious about the presence of the toxin in Napoleon’s system. However, exhaustive analysis carried out on hair fragments clipped at different points in Napoleon’s life have shown that he actually had consistently high levels of arsenic in his system from boyhood onwards. Read more about: British History The Battle of Waterloo This assassination theory was so widely held that scientific tests were conducted on locks of his hair in the 20th Century, to check for the presence of arsenic. There has been persistent speculation that he had in fact been poisoned by British agents, possibly because of a fear he would somehow manage to escape and embark on a fresh military adventure, just as he had after fleeing his first island of exile, Elba, years before. Napoleon died in exile on the island of St Helena, after a lingering illness. Indeed, a 15th Century Arab historian wrote that the nose had been destroyed by a Muslim man who was angered by Egyptian peasants making tributes to the Sphinx in a show of idolatry. Drawings made by the Danish explorer Frederic Louis Norden in the late 1730s clearly depict the Sphinx with that familiar, iconic expanse where the nose should be. The Sphinx had, in fact, lost its nose long before Napoleon and his men came upon the scene.

While it’s passed into folklore, the story can be easily debunked by glancing at the historical record. Read more about: Battles Napoleon: the enlightened despot

How tall is napoleon