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TIL that “Washington Monument Syndrome” refers to the habit of governmet agencies to shut down their most visible and valued services first when facing a budget shortfall, to gain support for tax increases the public would otherwise be against.

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0yvy TIL The human genome consists of DNA representing 800 MB of data. The parts that differentiate one person from another can be compressed to 4 MB.
Lk4lV TIL of Eugène-François Vidocq, a formal criminal who founded the first Private Detective agency in 1833. He mostly hired ex-convicts. His innovations include taking a plaster cast of a shoe print and introducing undercover work. He claims to have never informed on someone who stole for real need.
9wypm TIL in 2017 a couple survived a wildfire in California by jumping into a neighbors pool and staying submerged for 6 hours. They came up for air only when they needed to, using wet t-shirts to shield their faces from falling embers.
wLZaP TIL that, in 1803, an English town experienced so many ghost sightings that its citizens formed armed ghost-patrols to catch the spirit. The hunt ended when a bricklayer dressed in white was mistaken for the ghost and shot in the face.
x6Ln5 TIL that after Terry Jones filmed the 1996 adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" with live actors, the US distributor essentially ignored it. Eventually, Jones heard that the film was being shown in 1 US cinema; when he went there, he found out that it was a pornographic cinema.