Bill Haast
William E. "Bill" Haast (December 30, 1910 – June 15, 2011) was the director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility near Punta Gorda, Florida, which produces snake venom for medical and research use. Haast extracted venom from venomous snakes from the time he was a boy. From 1947 until 1984, he operated the Miami Serpentarium, a tourist attraction south of Miami, Florida, where he extracted venom from snakes in front of paying customers.
Haast physically extracted venom from venomous snakes by holding them by the head and forcing them to strike a rubber membrane covering a vial. As a result of handling these snakes, Haast had been bitten 172 times as of mid-2008.
Read more about Bill Haast: Early Life and Education, Career, Later Life
Famous quotes containing the word bill:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)