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TIL: The first smart home with a central control panel was released in 1975. Instead of communicating with smart devices wirelessly, it was physically hard wired throughout the house directly into the smart devices.

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8aa1G TIL that some people think of natural disasters as manipulated disasters, and that society creates the circumstance of a disaster by denying victims the opportunities to properly deal with naturally destructive events.
eoNn TIL that in 1954, the CIA launched a covert operation that overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Guatemala and replaced him with a right-wing authoritarian president, beginning over four decades of civil war and political repression
4bj5 TIL about the 1918 public lynching of Mary Turner. Turner (8 months pregnant) was hung upside down and set on fire. While still alive, her abdomen was cut open, causing her child to fall to the ground where she watched the lynch mob stomp him to death.
XEKQR TIL: Big Bird from Sesame Street almost died onboard the challenger spacecraft but was spared due to the costume being too large and unruly for space
LQyy0 TIL that the psychiatrist Henry Cotton would sometimes extract all of a patient's teeth as he believed infected teeth to be the cause of psychiatric disorders. If that didn't work, he'd remove testicles, ovaries, gall bladders, stomachs, spleens, cervixes and colons.