You don't "specify the header" with `-t wav`, you tell sox that it should expect a file in WAV format on `stdin`. So `sox` dutifully starts to parse `stdin`, and expects a `RIFF` header as part of the WAV format, but doesn't get it.
So it's not "sox stopped working", it's `rtl_fm` which is for some reason not producing a valid WAV format. Checking the man page, at least for the version of `rtl_fm` on the man page, the file type is given by `-t wav`, and not by `-E wav`. So check the options to `rtl_fm`.
Did you introduce a typo last week in the command line?