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TIL in the 80s, Munich's Playboy Club issued membership cards that, at a glance, looked very similar to diplomatic passports. As a result, many people escaped East Berlin by simply flashing their membership cards, and were usually waved through by guards.

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VBYAB TIL that North Korea hates western culture, namely capitalist culture, so much that they've banned various styles of blue jeans, certain types of piercings, and some styles of haircuts that are popularly seen, by them, as being representative of capitalist culture and lifestyle.
ewME TIL Charles Drew, the inventor of the “blood bank” and pioneer of successful blood transfusions, died during a failed blood transfusion after a car accident
0wAAj TIL the tomb of Louis XIV of France was ransacked during the French Revolution. By 1848, part of his mummified heart had fallen into the possession of the Archbishop of York. He showed it to the Dean of Westminster, who proceeded to eat it.
bQkp TIL that divers in 1900 discovered an ancient Greek shipwreck with an odd-looking bronze device on board. The device was later determined to be the world’s oldest analog computer, dating back to the 1st century B.C.E., thousands of years before similar technologies would be re-discovered
W7Jm9 TIL In 1944 the Japanese Cruiser IJN Tone sunk a British freighter and took 108 survivors onboard, against orders. Admiral Sakonju ordered the prisoners be 'disposed of' and 76 were taken out to sea and Beheaded. Sakonju was hung for war crimes in 1948.