Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant minds in history of mankind was born on 10th of July in 1856. in Smiljan, a village nearby Gospić. He was inventor and physicist born in Croatia, with Serbian origin. Father Milutin was an ortodox priest, and mother Georgina was a housewife.

Nikola Tesla never recovered from death of his older brother which was accidental. Great inventor, by Tesla’s words, who could achieve a lot. Death of his brother was the reason why Tesla subjected himself to spartan way of life, wishing to compensate family loss.

Education

Tesla attended German elementary school in Smiljan, which ended it in Gospić. He then attended Junior high school in Rakovac nearby Karlovac. His parents prepared him to be a priest, opposite to Tesla’s wishes. His father promised him further education in the best technical school in the area after spending nine months in bed because of cholera. So Tesla attended technical school in Graz, and studied in Prague a short while.

Working experience and innovations

Tesla worked in Thomas Alva Edison’s company in Paris. Among many of Edison’s inventions, the most famous one is definitely light bulb. Thanks to the construction of first inductive engine, Tesla went to United States of America and became an American citizen. He came to New York with 4 cents in his pocket, Edison employed him in his company. But they had disagreements.

First man of Westinghouse Electric Company, George Westinghouse then bought rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating – driven dynamos, transformers and motors. With that patent, Tesla confronted Edison’s direct system. Tesla formed his own laboratory in which he works until his death in 1943.

He said that he wasn’t an inventor, only a “discoverer of things that exist in nature for a long time”. With discovering of alternating current, Tesla confronted Edison once again. That conflict is known as “war of currents”. In alternating current (AC) the flow of electric charge periodically reverses direction. In direct current (DC), the flow of electric charge is only in one direction. Edison tried to prove that Tesla’s alternating current is dangerous, but he didn’t succeed. Tesla even rejected Nobel prize in Physics because he was supposed to receive it together with Edison. He didn’t acknowledge Edison as a scientist worthy enough to be his co receiver of the prize.

According to Tesla, tower constructed to provide free electric energy for everyone was built nearby New York. Problem occurred when investor realized that energy couldn’t be regulated. Therefore neither charge, so tower was destroyed.

Eccentric Tesla admitted that he is really happy during spending time in his laboratory. Life in celibacy enabled him to dedicate strictly to intellectual growth. He fluently spoke 8 languages.

Tesla didn’t have many close friends, but some of important people in his life were a sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. And writer Mark Twain who wrote a novel “Mysterious stranger” based on Tesla.

Tesla was a vegetarian, careful with for his diet and was vital even in his eighties. A very tall man (199 cm), extremely fashionable. Repeatedly has been selected for the best – dressed man in New York.

He visualized from early childhood, he visualized. He first “saw” each invention and then constructed it without a single record. Realization of a childhood dream was the design and the construction of hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. He invented wireless control and neon signs. Most of his inventions are hidden located far from eyes of public, because even the scientists of present time cannot comprehend mysterious Tesla’s mind.

Marin Držić, poet, dramatist and director, is the most important name of the Croatian Renaissance literature. He was born around year 1508 in the former Republic of Ragusa where the influences of the Italian Renaissance art were quickly visible in the domains of theatre and literature. Držić soon had the opportunity to develop his dramatic and theatrical skills in the midst of events at Sienna, where he studied Church canonical law.

Renaissance comedy

The years spent in Sienna enabled him a fruitful contact and the direct experience with the “learned comedy”. This genre of Italian Renaissance plays was written in the vernacular and on the paragon of works by ancient Roman authors, notably Plautus and Terrence. The learned comedy was usually based on love intrigues, with the personages chosen from a gallery of stock characters like young lovers, misers, cuckolds, adventurers, senile tyrants and cunning servants.

The most significant of Držić’s plays Skup and Uncle Maroje were written in the framework of the learned comedy in the attire of Dubrovnik. In addition, he produced some masterful examples of pastorals, farce , tragedy, and Petrarchan love poetry.

Držić’s plays manifest the richness of Croatian language in dialogues that are life celebrating, vivacious affirmation of love and freedom, mocking avarice, egoism and petty tyrants – both in the family and in the state.

Political letters

Special chapter in his life, but also in the history of Croatian political thought, belongs to the conspiring political letters that Držić addressed to Cosimo I. Medici, the famous duke of Tuscany. He was trying to persuade the duke to help him overthrow the oligarchy government in his home town while sketching the plan of a new political structure. Držić imagined it as an egalitarian rule of Dubrovnik’s gentry and the lower classes under the protectorate of the Medici family.

Marin Držić died in 1567 in Venice under unknown circumstances and was buried in the Church of St. John and St. Paul.