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Biography -
According to legend, Tesla was born precisely at midnight during an electrical storm, to a Serb family in the village of Smiljan near Gospić, in the Lika region of the Austrian Empire, in the Croatian part of Military Frontier, located in present-day Croatia. His baptism certificate reports that he was born on June 28 [N.S. July 10], 1856, and christened by the Serbian Orthodox priest Toma Oklobdžija. His father was Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. His mother was Đuka Mandić, herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest. She was talented in making home craft tools. She memorized many Serbian epic poems, but never learned to read. His godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was a captain in the army protecting the Military Frontier. Tesla was one of five children, having one brother (Dane, who was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five) and three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica). His family moved to Gospić in 1862. Tesla went to school in Karlovac, Croatia then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. He attended only through the first semester of his junior year and did not graduate. He then attended the Charles-Ferdinand branch of the University of Prague for one summer term where he studied physics and higher mathematics.
Nikola Tesla as a young man Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books. He had a photographic memory. Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain in precise form before moving to the construction stage; a technique which is sometimes known as picture thinking. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life, this began to happen during childhood.
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