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TIL in 1891 Chicago issued a challenge to all engineers to build a structure that would surpass The Eiffel Tower. The engineer who won proposed a giant rotating wheel that will lift visitors high above the city. The inventor of this giant wheel's name was George Ferris.

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VMkM0 TIL that the rule of thumb “half your age plus seven” was in earlier sources understood as a formula to calculate the ideal age for the bride, instead of a lower limit for the suitable age.
xdag TIL: Cards Against Humanity paid for all the workers at their factory in China that make the cards to go on a week long vacation, their first apparently.
DrZY TIL Voyager 1, the only man made object to leave the solar system, is carrying, amongst other records, a song called “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground”. This song is available to extraterrestrials, should they ever find it, but not available in India, Canada, or the UK on copyright grounds.
KOPrJ TIL Many medieval bridges had shops and houses on them. One such house was the Nonsuch House on London Bridge. It was the first prefab house house having first been constructed in the Netherlands and then shipped in pieces to London to be reassembled.
OJQR TIL that because Oakland and San Francisco were playing each other in the World Series, few people were driving on the double-deck freeway when it pancaked during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake