Mondo Knows Facts
John Snow traced cholera to a single water pump
Mapping deaths around Broad Street in 1854 pointed to contaminated water During a cholera outbreak in Soho in 1854, the physician John Snow plotted deaths on a street map and found them clustered around the Broad Street pump. He persuaded local officials to remove the handle, and the outbreak faded. Later work confirmed that the well had been contaminated by a nearby cesspit. It sits in Mondo's history collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Bazalgette built London's sewers after the Great StinkMore than 1,800 kilometres of brick tunnels carried waste out of the cityThe Great Fire of London destroyed the medieval city centreA bakery fire in Pudding Lane burned for four days in September 1666The Mousetrap is the longest running stage playAgatha Christie's whodunit has been performed in London since 1952The PDC world final is played at Alexandra PalaceThe tournament moved there in 2008 and draws large crowds over the new yearChadwick's sanitary report linked filth to early deathThe 1842 survey of British towns showed labourers dying far younger than gentrySemmelweis cut deaths by ordering handwashingA Vienna doctor noticed that doctors arriving from the mortuary carried infection
๐๏ธ Historyfact 150 of 200
โ โ to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: cholera, epidemiology, london
John Snow traced cholera to a single water pump: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Mapping deaths around Broad Street in 1854 pointed to contaminated water. The figure is taken from Wellcome Collection, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a history fact?
- Yes. It sits on the History shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.