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TIL that the Red River Floodway, a channel built in the 60's to protect Winnipeg, Canada from flood damage by diverting excess river flow around the city, was the second largest earth-moving project at the time, even more than the Suez Canal. It was surpassed only by the Panama Canal.

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6E9ZX TIL South Korean bootleggers made a plan to balloon drop Sony's "The Interview" to North Koreans, en masse. They had to cancel plans when North Korea learned of this and labeled such an action as "a declaration of war".
yQL98 TIL of the maple syrup urine disease, which is named for the presence of sweet-smelling urine, similar to maple syrup, when the person goes into metabolic crisis
Y7bX7 TIL that John Philip Sousa warned Congress that phonographs would destroy music, saying “The vocal cord will be eliminated, as was the tail of man.” The “March King” who helped invent the sousaphone called phonographs “infernal machines” and their output “canned music.”
GYK51 TIL Between 1600 - 1800, chimney sweeps in their adolescence often suffered and died from Chimney Sweep Cancer, a horribly painful and fatal cancer of the scrotum.
gMLO8 TIL The Apple IIGS computer was deliberately severely underclocked (2.8 out of 16 MHz) so it wouldn't outperform the much more expensive Macintosh Plus. (999 vs 2599 USD)