› added 3 years ago

478

TIL: In the mid 1800s downtown Chicago was lifted to deal with problems with mud and to make room for sewers. During this process, entire buildings and eventually entire blocks were slowly lifted with hydraulic jacks until the whole downtown area was raised up to 14 feet.

Read more enjoyillinois.com

via reddit.com

699dm TIL self checkouts can recognise produce items and they give you a list to choose from based on what they ‘see’
QxDk TIL that in the wake of the Katrina disaster, police from the New Orleans suburb of Gretna blocked desperate evacuees from crossing a bridge over the Mississippi River, turning back hundreds by firing guns in the air over the crowd.
R9Wl TIL the world’s oldest bra was found by archaeologists in a Vienna castle, and the bra was carbon dated at 600 years. That is perplexing because the modern bra is thought to have been invented only about 100 years ago and history books say that bras came after the corset.
ZW4v TIL that carrier pigeons only know how to fly back to their home base. The infrastructure that supported this messaging system required regular deliveries of birds between cities and regular release of the birds so they did not imprint on a new location.
KYLlB TIL multiple 19th century French artists (including Alexandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire, and Eugene Delacroix) were members of the "Club des Hashischins," a club dedicated to doing hashish and other drugs together and exploring their effects.