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TIL Uri Geller believes Nintendo 'stole his identity' for the Pokemon Kadabra, and no agreement has yet been reached between the two parties. As a result, there has not been a Kadabra card released in the Trading Card Game since 2003

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via reddit.com

v1E5K TIL of the Freedmen. The Cherokee had black slaves. In 1866 they signed a treaty that freed them and granted them and their descendants, tribal citizenship after Emancipation. The Nation has ostracized them and is trying to strip them of tribal citizenship largely due to their darker complexion.
Oopy6 TIL early versions of the Thompson submachine gun used a "Blish Lock" to hold the action closed. It was based on a theory that two dissimilar metals would resist movement under extreme pressures. The lock had no useful effect on the action and was eliminated in the WW2 redesign of the SMG.
j5av TIL that a children’s entertainer named Soupy Sales asked on-air that children send him “those funny little pieces of paper with pictures of presidents on them” from their parents’ purses and wallets and was thus suspended from his show for 2 weeks
jN5v TIL a physicist wrote a mock paper full of made up gibberish written in the style of post-modernist philosophers and managed to get it published trying to prove that some philosophers are bullshitters
epRM6 TIL that instead of using pesticides, the Mexican state of Coloma releases billions of sterile fruit flies who then outcompete the fertile ones for mates.