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TIL that Carl Linnaeus was invited by the mayor of Hamburg to see his taxidermied 7-headed hydra. Linnaeus quickly determined it was a fake held together with glue, and had to flee the city after he publicly said so, ruining the mayor's hopes of selling it for a large fortune.

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QR69 TIL that on October 19, 1864 Confederate soldiers slipped across the border from Canada and looted and robbed their way through Vermont during the American Civil War. They stole $208,000 or around $3 million in 2014 money
pDlZ TIL During WWII, more people died manufacturing V-2 Rockets than were killed by its use.
KON1E TIL In 1968 MV Captain Leonidas was a ship that was tried to capsized in the deepest fjord in Western Hemisphere in Messier Channel, Pantagonia Chile. The reason was to claim insurance , but the ship stayed afloat, the captain's license was revoked & the shipwreck remained in the channel.
VBoLG TIL that Jules Verne's Mysterious Island was based on Frisland, an island that appeared on maps from the 16th to the 18th century. Frisland was a hoax contrived by a pair of brothers who devised a culture reminiscent of the societies of Gulliver's Travels.
wopvW TIL of Vichy collaborator Maurice Papon, who deported 1600 Jews to Drancy camp in WW2. He also tortured Algerian insurgents and killed up to 300 protesters in Paris in 1961, disappeared a Moroccan Marxist, and was granted the Legion of Honour by Charles de Gaulle. He was not convicted until 1998.