On Jan. 9, 2014, DNA was isolated from a 165-year-old intestine of a cholera victim from Philadelphia –  the first from a nineteenth-century strain of Vibrio cholerae.

In 1849, A deadly cholera outbreak hit Philadelphia and other Eastern seaboard cities. About 1,000 city’s residents died from cholera that year, a figure that would be higher were it not for a program to wash city streets with clean water.