On this day in 1908, the Jersey City Waterworks in Boonton, New Jersey, opened for business, becoming the first in the nation to purify drinking water with chlorine. The use of chlorine in water purification has almost eliminated such deadly waterborne diseases as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery, and it has been the leading contributor to a drastic increase in life expectancy in the last century—from 47.3 years in 1900 to 76.1 years in 1996.