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TIL that in response to the cholera outbreak of 1854, Chicago engineers decided to install a sewage system by raising the grade of the city by up to 14 feet. That is, they literally put buildings on stilts and buried the new sewer pipes under the buildings.

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ADEPx TIL in 1959 Alfred Hitchcock was approached to direct the first James Bond movie. However, he did not want to make another spy thriller right after "North by Northwest", and instead started working on "Psycho".
LQ5GP TIL: Alexithymia, or emotional blindness, is condition where individuals struggle to recognize, express, and describe their own emotions. It’s linked to difficulties in attachment theory and interpersonal relations. It’s prevalent in people with autism spectrum disorder
L9eZ TIL that Ramon Artagaveytia, who survived the fire and sinking of a ship in 1871 suffered emotional scarring. 41 years later, he finally was able to overcome his fears, deciding to sail again; only to die in the sinking of that ship, which was the Titanic
BJBb TIL Bertrand Russel said “in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”. This is actually a bias called the Dunning–Kruger effect which says unskilled individuals feel an illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their analysis to be much better than it is.
MeZ90 TIL that California is named after a fictitious island described in a series of 16th century Spanish romance novels. The island was described as being inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and fought alongside Muslims