23 Facts About Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Croatian-American Inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He is the man who harnessed lightning, a true genius, he envisioned new technologies far before their time and claimed to have had contact with extraterrestrial beings.

Here are 23 facts about Nikola Tesla:

1) Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, modern day Croatia when a fierce thunderstorm raged across Croatia. According to family legend, midway through the birth, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the lightning a bad omen. This child will be a child of darkness, she said, to which his mother replied: “No. He will be a child of light.”

2) Nikola Teslas life was truly dramatic but at an early age, Nikola Tesla showed a superior mind, inventing things as a child, showing tremendous potential. Tesla became fascinated with electricity he was determined that one day he would harness the power of the Universe in benefit of all living creatures.

3) At the age of 28, Nikola Tesla moved to the United States and started working for Thomas Edison. Edison and Tesla became quickly rivals with different ideas but according to many, they were not sworn enemies and had mutual respect for one another.

4) Tesla’s inventions went far beyond electricity. He made groundbreaking discoveries such as wireless radio communications, turbine engines, helicopters, fluorescent and neon lights, torpedoes and the X-ray among others. By the time of his death, Tesla held nearly 700 worldwide patents.

5) Nikola Tesla was born at a time which, coincidentally, coincides with an ancient Zoharic prophecy that speaks about the opening of the gates of wisdom upon the earth.

6) Tesla developed the idea for a “Smartphone” in 1901 Tesla described this idea to J.P. Morgan – his funder. He envisioned a fascinating idea of developing a communication apparatus that would gather stock quotes and telegram messages, funneling them to his laboratory, where he would encode them and assign them each a new frequency. That frequency would be broadcast to a device that would fit in your hand –  a modern day smartphone.

7) Tesla did not like pearls, When his secretary wore pearl jewelry, he sent her home for the day. No one knows why he had such an aversion, but Tesla had a very particular sense of style and aesthetics.

8) Tesla claimed his brain was a receiver. “My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe, there is a core from which “We” obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know it exists”.

9) Tesla intercepted what he felt were intelligent signals from space. He was also among the first to capture radio signals from “the Black Knight Satellite”.

10) Tesla described experiencing intense flashes of light, which were followed by moments of intense creativity and clarity. Basically, Tesla was able to imagine and see an invention in his mind during this “moment of clarity” almost ion holographic detail, Tesla claimed that he could even rotate these visions taking them apart piece by piece and he knew exactly how he was going to build these inventions based on his visionary experiences.

11) One of his greatest creations is the rotating magnetic field. He claimed the idea came to him in a flash of intuition.

12) Tesla believed it’s absurd to think we’re the only intelligent beings.

13) Even though his invention fuels our technology even today, Nikola Tesla never received a Nobel Prize.

14) In 1934 Tesla made headlines with his most controversial invention, “the death beam” which according to Tesla, could generate enough energy to bring down a fleet of 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 250 miles away.

15) Tesla began work on his flying machine in 1910, focusing on the use of field propulsion, or anti-gravity Tesla had discovered that high amounts of electricity could actually create lift in an object.

16) Nikola Tesla was obsessed with the number three and he was very interested in numerology to the point he had to circle a building three times before entering it, you could say that he was a very superstitious man. He had calculated nodal points around the planet and they were probably linked to the numbers three, six and nine and Tesla claimed that these numbers were extremely important.

17) Just before his death, Nikola Tesla worked with Albert Einstein on a project for the United States Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Yard where they were trying to create an electromagnetically charged invisibility cloak for the  USS Eldridge. The experiment was allegedly based on an aspect of the unified field theory, a term coined by Albert Einstein.

18) According to witnesses, the Philadelphia Experiment went terribly wrong. The ship didn’t just disappear from radar, according to reports the USS Eldridge disappeared completely and reappeared with some of the crew “embedded” into the metal of the ship.

19) Tesla was an environmentalist. Tesla was “very concerned about the fact that we were using up the Earth’s resources too quickly, and he wanted to make sure that we were using nonfossil, renewable fuels.” Tesla researched ways to harvest the natural energy in the ground and in the sky.

20) Nikola Tesla rarely slept and claimed to have required only two hours of sleep a night, although he occasionally napped. He loathed jewelry and round objects and wouldn’t touch the hair.

21) Tesla died a broke humanitarian. Tesla did what he did for the betterment of humanity, to help people have a better quality of life. He never seemed to be interested in monetary gain.

22) When Tesla died in 1943, during World War II, the Office of Alien Property took his belongings. Most of his things were later released to his family, and many ended up in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which opened in the 1950’s. But some of Tesla’s papers are still classified by the U.S. government.

23) Tesla had what’s known as a photographic memory. He was known to memorize books and images and stockpile visions for inventions in his head.