White House mystery.

• Position: FORENSIC SCIENCE - Brief article

William Henry Harrison--America's shortest-serving president-died on April 4,1841, after just a month in office. It's long been thought that he developed pneumonia after delivering a more than two-hour, 8,000-word inaugural speech--the longest in history--in the freezing rain. But Philip A. Mackowiak of the University of Maryland has taken a new look at the evidence and has concluded that the ninth president probably died of typhoid fever-along with thousands of other Washingtonians in the 1800s-from contaminated water. Until 1850, the capital had a poor sewage system and the White House's water came from an area near a contaminated marsh. Two...