A roadside showman, BILL Haast, passed away at his home in Florida at the age of 100. He had injected himself with a blend of venoms from 32 snake species, for approximately 60 years, and acquired immunity against the deadly snake bites. During 1940s, he started to inject himself with diluted cobra poison and then increased the intake as well as concentration regularly.

In 1950, he was bitten by a most poisonous snake in world, blue krait, but succeeded to recover and again started his work. Afterwards, his blood, rich in venoms, had played a vital role to save the lives of numerous snake-bite victims, across the world.

In his lifetime, he credited the ownership of 10,000 snakes at a time and had supplies of venom from 200 species of poisonous reptiles, across the globe. From 1990s, he was a major provider of 36,000 samples of venom to a wide range of pharmaceutical laboratories each year.

He was the Director of Miami Serpentarium Laboratories based in Florida and gained immense popularity as a snake-venom producer where he attracted more than 50,000 tourists a year for four decades

However, his first wife Ann had separated from him because of his snake obsession and survived by this third wife, two daughters, three grandchildren, two- great grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.