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TIL in 1969, Paul McCartney’s head went missing from a Los Angeles billboard promoting the Beatles album “Abbey Road”. The mystery remained unsolved until 2012, when a man named Robert Quinn confessed that he stole it as a prank on his 19th birthday and still has McCartney’s head in his living room.

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R7Ly6 TIL shipping magnate Malcom McLean built the high speed SL-7 cargo ships only to see the '73 Oil Crisis increase fuel costs tenfold, forcing them from service. Next he bet the fate of his company on the extremely fuel efficient Jumbo Econships, only to see oil prices crash. US Lines went bankrupt.
jXNv TIL British Royal Navy pilot Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown holds the world record for most aircraft carrier landings - 2,407. The US Navy gave one man the specific job of breaking the record. He got up to 1,600 and then had a nervous breakdown.
R7Blw TIL In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) the ship Cotopaxi was discovered in the Gobi desert, presumably left there by Aliens. At that time the ship was believed to have been lost in the Bermuda Triangle in 1925, but was discovered in 1985 in Florida, and not verified until 2020.
6EnrQ TIL: the word "tycoon" is from the Japanese "taikun", meaning "great prince", and made the jump to English in the 1850s largely because it was used to describe Abraham Lincoln
Anj7 TIL Erwin Rommel as a junior officer in the German Army during World War 1, captured 19,000 Italian soldiers during the Battle of Caporetto over the course of 13 days with less than 150 men under his command. Six German soldiers died under his command in the battle.