Did you know that… on July 27, 1890, the brilliant but troubled Vincent van Gogh was shot in the chest while painting in a French wheat field?

The bullet missed his vital organs, allowing him to stagger back to his room, where he tragically died two days later at age 37. To this day, historians still debate whether it was a desperate act of suicide or a fatal accident covered up by the artist himself to protect a local teenager.

The Starry Night June 1889

If he really took the secret to his grave, was it an act of final despair, or a ultimate gesture of mercy?