Happy Birthday, Nikola

Did you know …

That a couple weeks ago, on July 10, it was Nikola Tesla’s birthday? It’s true!

In honor of Big T’s B-day, it’s time for another fact about everyone’s favorite “Croat on the Spectrum”!

Did you know . . .

That Tesla was afraid of birthday celebrations? It’s true!

It’s perhaps more accurate to say, however, that Tesla feared birthday parties because he feared the cakes they invariably contained. And he feared cakes because of the Thomas Edisons they invariably contained. You see, once a year, every year from when Tesla first went to work in Edison’s workshop until 1931 when Edison died, Edison would have himself baked into a large birthday cake for Tesla. And every year, just as Tesla was blowing out the candles, Edison would erupt from the cake, naked as a baby and grinning like a jack-o-lantern, and coldcock the poor birthday boy.

Presumably Tesla began to expect the attack after the first few times, but his sense of personal propriety wouldn’t allow him to turn down the cake, or refuse to blow out its candles. It wasn’t until the very final occasion, after receiving nearly 50 birthday concussions, that the 75-year-old Tesla was heard to whisper to his cake, “Please, Thomas, I wish you would not.” Of course, only Edison’s death three months later would stop him from striking Tesla, and the aged inventor popped out of the cake and knocked Tesla in the head with a claw hammer (Edison was 84 at this point, and several birthdays earlier he had begun to augment his failing strength with hammers and blackjacks).

There’s a famous etching (which I can’t seem to find now) of Edison, waste deep in cake and licking frosting from the head of a hammer, saying to the unconscious Tesla, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.”