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TIL The first bridge to span the Mississippi River was built in 1855 near Minneapolis. The Father Louis Hennepin Suspension Bridge charged a toll. Price for pigs and sheep was 2 cents, humans paid 3 cents, horses cost 15 cents and carriages cost 25 cents.

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YWAP TIL Rubber is a 2010 French film about a tire that comes to life and kills people using its psychic powers. It was a box office failure, earning only $100,370 compared to its $500,000 budget.
M7Gk7 TIL: PBS interviewed a legendary spy power couple who took turns as the CIA's Chief of Disguise. They invented many works now at the International Spy Museum including "Jack in the Box" a pop up dummy, disguises in painter's case, hidden cameras, and underwear that makes you appear pregnant.
gM5Y9 TIL Erskine Childers, a propagandist for the IRA during the Civil War, shook the hands of the men in the firing squad at his execution, and had his son promise to do the same for the men who signed his death warrant. His last words were “Take a step or two forward, lads, it will be easier that way.”
rwEo TIL An American has been held in a Dubai prison for 8 months without trial for uploading a spoof video on youtube.
0alR TIL In 1854, during the Crimean war, the British hospital in Constantinople was extremely unhygienic. Patients lay in their own excrement, and rodents and bugs scurried past them. More soldiers died of disease than injury. Florence Nightingale fixed this by getting patients to clean the hospital.