250-year-old ‘perfectly preserved’ cherries unearthed at first US president George Washington's mansion. See pics

George Washington never did cut down the cherry tree, despite the famous story to the contrary, but he did pack away quite a few bottles of the fruit at his Mount Vernon home. 18th-century glass bottles that contained cherries and berries sit inside an archaeology lab near George Washington's residence in Mount Vernon. Jason Boroughs, Mount Vernon's principal archaeologist, said the discovery of so much perfectly preserved food from more than 250 years ago is essentially unprecedented. Curator Lily Carhart shows a pipette they used to extract liquid from a few dozen 18th-century glass bottles that contained fruit after they were unearthed from the cellar of George Washington's residence in Mount Vernon.