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TIL the reason for the Netherlands not being underwater is due to its complex network of dikes, ditches, canals and pumping stations that have been built through the course of its history. It is so intricate that controlled flooding can create a ring of fortification around Amsterdam, its capital.

Rk88 TIL that sleep deprivation causes the brain to become incapable of putting an emotional event into the proper perspective and incapable of making a controlled, suitable response to the event.
R7nRQ TIL Phil Hartman, who voiced Simpsons characters Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure was murdered by his drug affected wife Brynn while he slept in 1998. SNL's Jon Lovitz partly blamed Andy Dick for re-introducing Brynn to drugs, which sparked an altercation where Lovitz smashed Dicks face into a bar.
P11wg TIL that Appalachia, long portrayed as uniformly settled by the Scot-Irish and solely inhabited by poor working class Whites, has for centuries had an African American population that in some cases amounted to 25% of Appalachian inhabitants, an omission that manages to stereotype both races.
wLYO8 TIL that Hiram Revels was the first African-American Senator. He took the seat of Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy
xrWw TIL Dalmations are seen in popular culture as “firehouse dogs” because of their natural affinity towards horses They would commonly run alongside or underneath the horse drawn fire carriages in the days of old