the most advanced and elaborate sewage system in the entire world was largely operational by 1865. The numbers behind the project were staggering. In those six years, Bazalgette and his team had constructed eighty-two miles of sewers, using over 300 million bricks and nearly a million cubic yards of concrete. The main intercepting sewers had cost only £4 million to construct, which would be roughly $250 million today. (Of course, Bazalgette’s labor costs were much cheaper than today’s.) It remains the backbone of London’s waste-management system to this day. Tourists may marvel at Big Ben or
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