Unknown facts About Nicola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was an electrical engineer, inventor and one of the most outstanding physicists in the history of science. But beyond his brilliant work, some aspects of his life remain unspoken in the pages of history.

Tesla registered more than 300 Patents and became famous for developing AC (alternating current), while his work became the basis of developments in wireless communications, radar, laser X rays, lighting, robotics, and many other areas.

Here is a list of interesting facts you probably never knew about the guy

1. He Was Born During a Lightning Storm

Nikola Tesla was born approximately at midnight, between July 9 and July 10, 1856, during a lightning storm. During Tesla birth, and according to the story told by his family, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the lightning a bad omen. “This child will be a child of darkness”, she reportedly said, to which Tesla’s mother replied: “No. He will be a child of light.”

2. He Was Amusing Person

Most people have no idea that Tesla had an extraordinary sense of humor, Seifer said. For example, after dining with writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, he wrote this in a correspondence to a close friend:

April 1, 1901

My dear Mrs. Johnson,

What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and cockroaches in the soup.

Yours truly,

N. Tesla

3. The Tesla Museum was funded by a cartoon

In May, the Wardenclyffe was purchased by the Tesla Science Center for $ 1,370,000 donated by the websiteIndieGoGo. The campaign was started by Matthew Inman, creator of the popular comic Oatmeal.

4. Some of Tesla’s inventions are classified

When Tesla died in the year of 1943, the Office of Alien Property took his stuff. Most of his things were given to his family, and many were taken to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. However, some documents still remain classified by the U.S. Government.

5. He and Edison were rivals, but not sworn enemies

Many have pictured Tesla and inventor Thomas Edison as enemies (see it shows in Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison: Epic Rap Battles and 10 Ways Edison Treated Tesla Like a Jerk,) but Carlson says this relationship has been misrepresented. Early in his career, Tesla worked for Edison, designing direct current generators, but famously quit to pursue his own project: the alternating current induction motor. Sure, they were on different sides of the so-called “Current Wars,” with Edison pushing for direct current and Tesla for alternating current. But Carlson considers them the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of their time: one the brilliant marketer and businessman, and the other a visionary and “tech guy.”

Nikola Tesla

6. Tesla was an environmentalist

As Alcorn said, Tesla was “worried about the fact that people consume the Earth’s resources too fast, so he wanted to make sure that these resources were renewable“. Thus he studied the ways to gather the natural energy from the ground and air. He created artificial lightning in his lab and detected differences in electrical potential on Earth and on high objects.

7. He had the Idea for Smartphone Technology in 1901

Tesla may have had a brilliant mind, but he was not as good at reducing his ideas to practice, Carlson said. In the race to develop transatlantic radio, Tesla described to his funder and business partner, J.P. Morgan, a new means of instant communication that involved gathering 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, he explained. In other words, Tesla had envisioned the smart phone and wireless internet, Carlson said, adding that of all of his ideas, that was the one that stopped him in his tracks.

This Tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo was taken. Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines via Wikimedia Commons.

“He was the first to be thinking about the information revolution in the sense of delivering information for each individual user,” Carlson said.

He also conceived of, but never developed technology for radar, X-rays, a particle beam “death ray” and radio astronomy.

8. Tesla died living as a very poor humanist

In addition to being an environmentalist, the famous inventor was also a humanist. According to Alcorn, “he did what he did for the sake of the betterment of mankind and wanted to give people an opportunity to have a better quality of life. Thus, he never seemed to care about monetary gain and never had enough money for his research.”

Although he had famous friends such as Mark Twain and French actress Sarah Bernhardt, he was never a wealthy man, unlike Edison and Westinghouse who proved much more successful entrepreneurs.

He was an accomplished pool player who liked to hustle, even for tiny amounts of money. At the height of his fame, when he was dining at Delmonico’s every night, he regularly bilked players out of a few quarters each—about $15 in today’s money.

9. He scared the sh*t out of Mark Twain’

One famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that he had an earthquake machine in his Manhattan laboratory that shook his building and nearly brought down the neighborhood during experiments.

Tesla’s device wasn’t actually an earthquake machine, Carlson said, but a high frequency oscillator. A piston set underneath a platform in the laboratory shook violently as it moved another experiment in more efficient electricity.

It didn’t bring the block to ruins, Carlson said, but it did “shake the poop out of Mark Twain.” Twain was known for having digestive problems. One day Tesla, who knew Twain through their gentlemen’s club, invited him over. He instructed Twain to stand on the platform while he flipped on the oscillator. After about 90 seconds, Twain jumped off the platform and ran for the facilities.

10. He had famous friends

People aren’t aware that he was close friends with conservationist John Muir, Seifer said. Muir, one of the founders of the Sierra Club, loved that Tesla’s hydroelectric power system was a clean energy system. It runs on waterfalls, which Tesla referred to as “running on the wheelwork of nature.” Also among his friends: financiers Henry Clay Frick and Thomas Fortune Ryan. “He lived in the Waldorf Astoria, at the height of the gilded age,” Seifer said, adding that his fame later in life lessened.

11. Tesla suffered from insomnia and obsessive compulsive behaviors (OCD)

He claimed that he needed only two hours of sleep a night, although he occasionally took an afternoon nap. Tesla hated round objects and jewelry, and could not bear to touch hair. Also he was obsessed with the number 3 and had a habit of polishing each point of the dining room before dining, using precisely 18 napkins.

12. Pearls drove him crazy

Tesla could not stand the sight of pearls, to the extent that he refused to speak to women wearing them. 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, Carlson said, and believed that in order to be successful, one needed to look successful. He wore white gloves to dinner every night and prided himself on being a “dapper dresser.”

Every photograph of Tesla, he said, is very carefully constructed to capture his “good side.”

13. He had a photographic memory and a fear of germs

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. He also had a powerful imagination and the ability to visualize in three dimensions, which he reportedly used to control the terrifying vivid nightmares from which he suffered from as a child. It’s in part what makes him such a mystical and eccentric character in popular culture, Carlson said. He was also known for having excessive hygiene habits, born out of a near-fatal bout of cholera as a teenager.

14. Tesla built a tower intending to suck electricity out of the air

He built a 185-foot tower on Long Island, planning to suck electricity out of the air and send it through the earth. Sadly for humanity: it did not work. In 1917, the tower was torn down. Somebody blamed the government, who allegedly blamed the Germans who were supposedly using it as a spy tower. This all appears to have been a cover: Tesla was broke and his debtors wanted to salvage what they could from the wreckage.

Lesser Known Facts- Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh a great martyr of Punjab, popularly referred as Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagt Singh, was born on 28 September 1907 at the village of Banga, Lyallpur district (now in Pakistan). Considered to be one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. He had a spirit of martyrdom since his childhood.

In the leaflet he threw in the Central Assembly on 9 April 1929, he stated that It is easy to kill individuals but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled while the ideas survived.

Less known facts about Bhagat Singh

• Bhagat Singh was a great actor in college and took part in several plays. Most notable plays he was praised in were ‘Rana Pratap’, ‘Samrat Chandragupta’ and ‘Bharata-durdasha’.
• At the age of 12, right after the Jalianwala Bagh incident, Bhagat Singh bunked school and went straight to the place of the tragedy. He collected a bottle of mud wet with blood of Indians and worship the bottle every day.
• As a child, Bhagat Singh often talked and wanted to grow guns in the fields, so that he could fight the British.
• At the age of 8, he talked about driving out Britishers from India and not about the games or toys.
• At an early age he was attracted towards socialism and socialist revolutions led by Lenin Soon he started to reading about them.
• Singh said: “They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.” This was to be quoted many times over by revolutionaries after Singh’s death.
• The bombs Bhagat Singh and his associates threw in the Central Assembly in Delhi were made from low grade explosives. They were lobbed away from people in the corridors of the building and were meant only to startle and not harm. The British investigation into the incident and forensics report also confirmed this.
• During his stay in prison in 1930, Bhagat Singh coined the word “political prisoner” and demanded he and his comrades be given basic amenities that even British looters and goons in the jail were entitled to.
• He coined the phrase ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ that became the slogan of the India’s armed freedom struggle.
• Singh was hanged an hour ahead of the official time when the death sentence was to be commuted and was secretly cremated on the banks of the river Sutlej by jail authorities. However, thousands of people on hearing the news gathered at the spot and took out a procession with his ashes.

Fun Facts 1.9

1. A cockroach will live for weeks without its head before it starves to death
2. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories a hour
3. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
4. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
5. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
6. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
7. Butterflies taste with their feet.
8. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
9. A cat's urine glows under a black light.
10. (removed, duplicated)
11. Starfish have no brains.
12. Polar bears are left-handed.
13. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
14. In France, it is legal to marry a dead person

Fun Facts 1.8

1. The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
2. Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
3. It’s against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
4. You’re born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
5. Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!
6. Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
7. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
8. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
9. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
10. Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
11. Slugs have 4 noses.
12. Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
13. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
14. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
15. The average person laughs 10 times a day!
16. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain
17. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
18. If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
19. The human heart! creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
20. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

Fun Facts 1.7

1. Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
2. Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
3. The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump!
4. One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
5. (removed, duplicated)
6. The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
7. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
8. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
9. The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
10. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
11. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
12. Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
13. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
14. Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
15. On average a hedgehog’s heart beats 300 times a minute.
16. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
17. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
18. More people are allergic to cow’s milk than any other food.
19. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
20. The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!

Fun Facts 1.7

1. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It's the same with apples!
2. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
3. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
4. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
5. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.
6. The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
7. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
8. Of all the words in the English language, the word ’set’ has the most definitions!
9. What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
10. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
11. "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
12. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
13. (removed, duplicated)
14. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
15. You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath
16. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
17. It’s against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland.
18. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
19. Horatio Nelson, one of England’s most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
20. The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London

Fun Facts 1.6

1. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
2. (removed, duplicated)
3. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
4. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
5. During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
6. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
7. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
8. (removed, duplicated)
9. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear any pants.
10. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
11. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower' because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.
12. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
13. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
14. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
15. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!
16. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!
17. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.
18. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
19. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
20. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.