Bill Haast

Bill Haast (December 30, 1910 – June 15, 2011) was the owner and operator, from 1947 until 1984, of the Miami Serpentarium, a tourist attraction south of Miami, Florida, where he entertained customers by performing live venom extraction from snakes. After closing the Serpentarium, he opened the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, a facility in Punta Gorda, Florida that produced snake venom for medical and research use. Haast extracted venom from venomous snakes from the time he was a boy.

Haast physically extracted venom from venomous snakes by holding them by the head and forcing them to bite a rubber membrane covering a vial. As a result of handling these snakes, Haast had been bitten 172 times by mid-2008, all of which but the last few were validated by the Guinness Book of World Records "for surviving the most deadly snake bites", a distinction Haast disliked as he did not think being bitten was a goal to be attained or admired.