Danny Baza Blas

Harrison on his death bed (from Free Historic Stock Photos ) In an article  By Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak in today's edition of the NY Time, President Harrison, known to be the shortest-serving U.S. president, serving only about a month before his untimely death, officially due to pneumonia, may have died of god-awful Salmonella. Apparently in D.C. around the 1840's there was not proper sewage treatment, and all of the poopy water collected in a marsh near the White House. Bacteria may have collected in the manure marsh, creating a deadly pathogen, which may have been the cause of Harrison's demise.

It's called resurrection ecology, and it's about reviving organisms from the pretty far past. A group of scientists, working on an island off the coast of Antarctica, cored deep into the permafrost (a layer of frozen, ground that remains frozen year-round) and one of the many things they pulled up was 1,500 year-old moss. In a state of frozen animation. It was revived with some light and squirts of water in a lab in England. NY Times article is here . The article has examples of other organisms they have revived, like germs.