Nikola Tesla was born on July 10th, 1856 in Croatia. The Croatian government is honoring this by turning his house into a museum.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer has the story:
Croatia to mark Tesla's 150th birthdayCool -- That would be a fun conference to go to but there is a major blacksmithing conference in Seattle then and I will be there. Tesla is an interesting character. Not that many people know about him and a lot of people are tying his name in with a lot of pseudo-science bunko. Tesla invented a few things you may be familiar with. The system of electrical power distribution that we use still to this day. (60Hz, polyphase), the synchronous electric motor, the fluorescent light, radio (the US Patent for Radio was taken away from Marconi and given to Tesla by the US Supreme Court.) -- several years before Marconi sent the "S" across the Atlantic Ocean, Tesla demonstrated at the Chicago exposition a radio controlled boat that would turn left and right, stop and start, flash lights and submerge and surface, all by radio control. He was producing shadowgraphs before Roentgen discovered X-Rays and there is the possibility that in his Colorado Springs lab, he was bouncing radio waves off the moon (he got the times right for the echo return anyway.) Just another crank...
Croatia in 2006 will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, an ethnic Serb who did pioneering work in electricity in the United States in late 19th and early 20th century, the country's parliament decided Thursday.
The government will finance the finishing of restoration of Tesla's home in a village in central Croatia and turn it into a museum. Conferences and lectures on Tesla's work are also planned.
Tesla, born in 1856 to Serbian parents, studied and worked across Europe, eventually settling in New York in 1885, where he lived until his death in 1943. He was awarded patents on every aspect of the modern system for generating and distributing electricity - including in radio and the modern concept of radar - and experts see his work as being as important as that of Alexander Graham Bell.
