North Brother Island is a 13-acre piece of land located in the East River, a couple of miles away from Manhattan, New York. It is a place where over 1.000 people died after a passenger ship sank in the island’s waters. Later it was a Riverside Hostipal where they treated contagious diseases. The most notorious resident was Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. Mary was the first documented person in the USA to be identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the bacteria that causes typhoid fever. It is believed that she infected more than 50 people with, 3 of whom died, and always denied being a carrier. The reason? She rarely washed her hands while making deserts and spread the bacteria to anyone who ate them. The island was later abandoned until the 1950’s when a center opened to treat drug addicts. Now it is a bird sanctuary for herons and other wading shorebirds. The island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public.