Today is the birthday of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-born American engineer. He is known for his Tesla Coil and the contributions he made to alternating current electricity supply system. 

He was born in 1856 to an Eastern Orthodox Priest and his wife. Tesla’s mother, Đuka Mandić Tesla, had a knack for crafting tools for use in the home and fixing what mechanical appliances the family had. Despite no formal education, Đuka had an elastic brain and could recite epic poems from memory. Tesla credited his mother with giving him an excellent memory and instilling in him an insatiable curiosity for how things worked. 

A professor’s demonstrations of electricity during Tesla’s teen years piqued his own interest in the subject. He felt there was something particularly alluring about electricity and desired to learn more. 

Tesla returned from school to his small hometown at age 17, having completed the 4-year term in just three years. However, instead of being able to set out for more schooling or work, Tesla contracted cholera. 

Tesla was the only surviving boy of his parents’ four children. His elder brother had died in a horseriding accident when Tesla was a child. Tesla’s father, Milutin, was watchful during his nine-month bout with cholera. Desperate his only son survive, Tesla’s father promised Tesla that he would no longer ask him to become a priest. Instead, his father promised to send him to the best engineering school in all of Europe if Tesla would only survive the illness. 

Two years later, Tesla was able to attend the Austrian Polytechnic Institute on scholarship. He had perfect attendance and aced all his classes. He claimed to work from 3am to 11pm Sunday through Saturday on his coursework. 

Although an admirable work-ethic, Tesla was burnt-out by his second year. He lost his scholarship, became addicted to gambling, and dropped out of school altogether. He moved away, and embarrassed, told no one where he was going. 

It wasn’t until his father was struck with an unknown illness that Tesla returned home, offering support to his father and family as they had to him during his fit of cholera. During this time, Tesla seemed to regroup a bit, and settled into a routine of teaching at the grammar school he had attended in his own youth. 

Finally, after a term auditing classes in Prague, Tesla secured a job in Budapest, the first job in a long line of positions on the path to a shining legacy in electrical and mechanical engineering.

Today is the birthday of Mildred Benson, America journalist and author. 

In 1929, Benson, a twenty-something journalist, answered an ad in a newspaper by Stratemeyer Syndicate looking for ghostwriters.  

After completing her first ghostwriting assignment Ruth Fielding and Her Great Scenario, she was given notes for a new series, starring a character named Nancy Drew. Benson’s Nancy Drew work was edited and rewritten by the Stratemeyer staff in accordance with their needs, but it was Benson who was responsible for Nancy’s spunky personality and adventurous spirit. She ended up penning the first 23 books in the Nancy Drew series. She claimed her favorite was the second, The Hidden Staircase.

The wild success of Nancy Drew emboldened Benson to write her own teen adventure series, known as the Penny Parker series. Benson wrote the Penny Parker books on her own and she felt that her character Penny Parker was “more ‘Nancy Drew’ than Nancy was.”

When it was revealed that Mildred Benson was indeed the writer behind the Carolyn Keene pen-name, Mildred received plenty of requests to sign copies of Nancy Drew books, but only obliged on the copies she had written. 

 

By William Blake

 

O Rose, thou art sick! 

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy