Today Is...Emperor Nero Dies

Reading history books you could be excused for thinking that Nero was arrogant and self-centred and there is much about killing his mother and executing his first wife and kicking his second wife to death.
When Nero ascended the throne and become the emperor, he thought his mother, Agrippina, held too much influence and was too popular so decided that she had to go but it needed to look like an accident so he rigged her bed so that when she lay down in it, her weight would activate a mechanism that would cause the ceiling to collapse on top of her but instead of her the ceiling collapsed on the slave she got to lay down and warm her bed.
Next he tried to drown her by capsizing a boat she was on but she managed to outwit him by swimming to shore so he went old school and hired three men to stab her to death in her sleep instead.
During the great fire of Rome, which may or may not have been started by him, he had called all the Senators to his place to allow them the pleasure of listening to him play the fiddle and although they protested that the city was going up in flames, being the consummate professional that he was, he insisted that the show must go on although its doubtful that the Senators were really paying attention what with the city burning down around them and all that.
The history books do make him sound awful, especially the using burning Christians covered in animal fat to light his garden at night but he tried Muslims and Jews and they just didn't burn so bright, lack of pork in their diet probably, and an Emperor shouldn't be expected to risk tripping in the garden and getting his toga muddy.
Something the ruler of the largest Empire shouldn't do is commit suicide in the wrong way which is why he asked several of his friends to try it first, which they did in different ways but after witnessing all that screaming and stabbing themselves and bleeding, he decided he probably won't do it after all and went back home. 
With all of Rome baying for his blood, he asked his secretary, Epaphroditos, to stab him when he wasn't expecting it and he did exactly that, walking straight to the kitchen and seconds later he was sprawled on the floor, dead with a knife in his back.