I'm surprised the article didn't explain outright that the botulinum toxin is the most toxic substance on earth. More than cyanide, sarin, VX, plutonium or anything else man made or natural.
Another interesting side note is Napoleon Bonaparte offered a prize to anyone who could preserve food. Armies used to have to eat what they found locally since carrying large amount of food was too tedious. In the late 1700s Nicolas Appert managed to discover heat "pasteurization" (well before Louis Pasteur method in the 1860s). The only problem was Appert used heat that was too high and for too long resulting in mushy food Pasteur's method had better results.
Interestingly Pasteur was inspired by a relative of Napoleon 1st only this time it was a nephew Napoleon III.
Botulinum toxin, a protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, could be “the most poisonous poison” there is, as writer Carl Lamanna called it in an article for Science, in 1959. First weaponized by Imperial Japan in the 1930s, and later, Nazi Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, a single gram of toxin could theoretically kill more than a million people if dispersed into the air and inhaled.
Another interesting side note is Napoleon Bonaparte offered a prize to anyone who could preserve food. Armies used to have to eat what they found locally since carrying large amount of food was too tedious. In the late 1700s Nicolas Appert managed to discover heat "pasteurization" (well before Louis Pasteur method in the 1860s). The only problem was Appert used heat that was too high and for too long resulting in mushy food Pasteur's method had better results.
Interestingly Pasteur was inspired by a relative of Napoleon 1st only this time it was a nephew Napoleon III.