Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia) – 7 January 1943, 

New York City, United States) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. 

In 1928, Tesla received U.S. Patent 1,655,114, for a biplane capable of taking off vertically (VTOL aircraft) and then of being "gradually tilted through manipulation of the elevator devices" in flight until it was flying like a conventional plane. Tesla thought the plane would sell for less than $1,000, although the aircraft has been described as impractical, although it has early resemblances to the V-22 Osprey used by the US military.

V-22 Osprey

This was his last patent. At the 1932 party, Tesla claimed he had invented a motor that would run on cosmic rays. In 1933 at age 77, Tesla told reporters at the event that, after 35 years of work, he was on the verge of producing proof of a new form of energy. He claimed it was a theory of energy that was "violently opposed" to Einsteinian physics, and could be tapped with an apparatus that would be cheap to run and last 500 years.

   He never married. He walked 8 to 10 miles per day and he squished his toes one hundred times for each foot every night.

Tesla walked to the park every day to feed the pigeons. He began feeding them at the window of his hotel room and nursed injured birds back to health. He said that he had been visited by a certain injured white pigeon daily. He spent over $2,000 to care for the bird, including a device he built to support her comfortably while her broken wing and leg healed.Tesla stated:

   "I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life. "

  In the fall of 1937 at the age of 81, after midnight one night, Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker to make his regular commute to the cathedral and library to feed the pigeons. While crossing a street a couple of blocks from the hotel, Tesla was unable to dodge a moving taxicab and was thrown to the ground. Tesla refused to consult a doctor, an almost lifelong custom, and never fully recovered. On 7 January 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.

   On 9 January 1943 the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered the Alien Property Custodian to seize Tesla's belongings. John G. Trump, a professor at M.I.T. and a well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items, which were being held in custody. After a three-day investigation, Trump's report concluded that there was nothing which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands, stating:

"Tesla's thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results."

Interesting facts:
John George Trump (August 21, 1907 – February 21, 1985) was an American electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist.  He was the youngest of three children of German Lutheran immigrants Frederick and Elizabeth Christ Trump.
 John had a sister, Elizabeth Trump Walters (1904–1961), and a brother, Frederick Christ  Trump (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999), an American businessman and philanthropist. Frederick was a prominent real-estate developer in New York City , and the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, Maryanne Trump Barry, a former United States Court of Appeals judge, and Frederick Jr, who died at age 42 from complications due to alcoholism.