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TIL Oval car stickers were originally a requirement for European vehicles to indicate their country of origin. Travelers from abroad would bring the stickers home to show off their destinations. They have since become a popular style of bumper sticker for many destinations outside of Europe as well.

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woXe8 TIL in the 1970s, France acted as Saddam Hussein's "chief arms broker"; they sold $25billion in weapons to Iraq of which most was advanced fighters and missiles (close to $100bil in today's money)
1aY6P TIL about Robert W. Patten (1832-1913), an American eccentric who moved to Seattle and became locally famous for his outrageous claims and umbrella hat
5YD9n TIL about autological words ("English", "parasyllabic", "unhyphenated") which describe themselves, and heterological words ("long", "hyphenated", "monosyllabic") which do not describe themselves. "Heterological" itself cannot logically be autological or heterological: The "Grelling–Nelson Paradox"
OOma TIL during a training exercise in 1940, 2 Australian air force planes collided & locked together 1000ft in the air, yet pilot L. Fuller landed the entangled planes after all other trainees ejected. Fuller, aged 21, was commemorated, but died 4yrs later when his bicycle collided with a passenger bus.
rNNgd TIL that a mathematical model can explain why we cannot find "aliens": it's likely we are one of the early species able to evolve to this point. If we survive to ourselves, chances are that we will become the "grabby aliens" that we cannot find.