Poison

When I was a child I thought all mothers poisoned their children. I distinctly remember being at the breakfast table, age five, and I said, "When I grow up, I'm going to poison my children too!"

Today is the birthday of mystery writer Agatha Christie (books by this author), born Agatha Miller in Torquay, England, in 1890. During the first and second World Wars, she worked at a hospital dispensary; this gave her a knowledge of pharmaceuticals and poisons that would later serve her well as the author of more than 70 murder mysteries, including Murder on the Orient Express (1933), Death on the Nile (1937), and the play The Mousetrap (1952), which has been running continuously on London's West End since 1952, the longest initial run of any play in history.

Agatha Christie once said, "The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes."