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Number of Chicagoans who died of typhoid fever and cholera in 1885 after six inches of rain in one day caused tons of raw sewage to flow into Lake Michigan drinking water.
Typhoid was a perennial 19th Century woe; no less than Stephen A. Douglas died of it. An outbreak in 1890 led Daniel Burnham to import pure water from a Wisconsin spring via a 101-mile gravity pipeline for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and sparked the huge project in 1900 that reversed the Chicago River’s flow and kept sewage from draining into the lake. In 1912, Chicago began chlorinating its drinking water, going from No. 2 in typhoid among U.S. cities to dead last.
