Throughout his entire life, Tesla would experience bright flashes of lights and hallucinatory-like images when his mind became excited. It was around this time that young Tesla started to become afflicted with strange visions and phobias. His father eventually gave Nikola his blessing to continue his education, and only then did Nikola find the strength to recover from his illness. While bedridden, he pleaded with his father, the Reverend Milutin Tesla, to allow him to continue his studies in engineering instead of joining the clergy. However, his studies were interrupted in his teenage years when he contracted cholera. By the age of eight, he was reading constantly and starting to grow interested in engineering and physics. The event deeply affected young Nikola and he tried to console his parents the only way he knew how: by becoming the best student he could be. She could recite by heart long passages of poetry without hesitation and handcrafted her own tools to create fabrics with impressively intricate designs.Īnd when Nikola was just five years old, his 12-year-old brother Daniel died in a mysterious accident. Tesla always claimed that his photographic memory and vivid imagination were passed down from his mother, Ðuka Mandíc. The beginning of his life was defined by three things: an illness, a family tragedy and the unique genetic gifts he inherited from his mother.

Traditionally, most men born in this region were destined for a life as a minister in the Church or as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. At exactly midnight, between July 9 and 10, 1856, Nikola Tesla was born in the Croatian village of Smiljan.

Nikola tesla margaret cheney