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TIL Jules Verne wrote the novel “Paris in the Twentieth Century” back in 1863 and described a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network.

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Q14M TIL That Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde while on a 6 day cocaine binge.
dbJr TIL of Ossip Bernstein, a famous chess grandmaster, who was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks in 1918. While he was facing the firing squad, a russian officer that heard his name offered him the chance to prove his identity in a game of chess. He beat the officer and was released.
8ekA4 TIL Fan Tan Alley in Victoria's Chinatown was a popular location for opium factories as until 1908, it was legal to produce opium in Canada. They alley's gambling clubs, cafes and restaurants were most popular in the 1940s since Chinese men had extra cash to spend
xaY7 TIL: When slaves were freed in the USA, some towns in the south would arrest young black men for not having a job and then sell them to corporations like US Steel as slaves for the duration of their sentence
OBg6 TIL that Neil Young was once sued by his record label for $3.3 million for recording an album that was “musically uncharacteristic of [his] previous recordings.”