Emperor Nero wanted his mother dead so badly that he built a boat designed to fall apart in the middle of the sea. His mother was Agrippina, possibly the most dangerous woman in Roman history. She married her own uncle, the emperor Claudius, got him to adopt Nero over his own son, and was widely believed to have poisoned Claudius with mushrooms to put Nero on the throne at 16. For a while she basically ran the empire through her son. But by 59 AD Nero was sick of her controlling him. So he decided to kill her. Poison was out. According to the historian Suetonius, he tried it three times, and she'd been taking antidotes for years. He reportedly even rigged a ceiling to collapse on her bed, but she found out. Then the commander of the navy, a man named Anicetus, came up with a better idea. A boat that would collapse at sea. She'd drown, and it would look like a tragic accident. Nero invited his mother to a festival at the resort town of Baiae on the Bay of Naples. He was sweet to her all evening, walked her to the shore, hugged her, and kissed her goodbye. Then he put her on the boat. Out on the calm, starry water, the trap went off. The canopy over her couch had been weighted down with lead, and it came crashing down. It killed one of her attendants instantly. But the sides of the couch were high enough to shield Agrippina. The boat was supposed to break apart. It didn't fully work. The crew in on the plot tried to tip it over, and both women went into the water. Her servant Acerronia started yelling that she was Agrippina, hoping to be rescued. The crew beat her to death with oars. The real Agrippina kept quiet, swam away in the dark with a wounded shoulder, and was picked up by fishing boats. She made it back to her villa alive. She knew exactly what had happened. But she sent a messenger to Nero saying she'd survived a terrible accident, thank the gods, and he shouldn't come see her yet. Nero panicked. When the messenger arrived, Nero dropped a sword at his feet and announced the man had been sent to assassinate him. Now he had an excuse. He sent Anicetus and a group of sailors to the villa to finish the job. According to Tacitus, when they surrounded her bed, Agrippina told them to stab her in the womb, the place that had given birth to Nero. Nero told the Senate his mother had plotted against him and taken her own life. The Senate thanked the gods for saving him.