During the Second Opium War in 1857, a rebel baker in Hong Kong attempted to poison the colony’s British ruler. The aim had been to bake the poison into a loaf of bread, but the baker used too much poison, and the governor just vomited it up. The assassination plot was thwarted, and the baker was apprehended.
This was just one of many incidents that occurred during the Second Opium War, a struggle between the British Empire and China’s Qing Dynasty over the illegal opium trade. The conflict began in 1856 and ended in 1860 with a British triumph.