Man Who Electrified the World: 32 Amazing Facts About Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla shunned physical contact with other people, with a special aversion to touching hair. To avoid shaking hands with people he met, he lied that he had injured his hands in a laboratory accident.

27. Nikola Tesla held an interview in 1899 claiming everything is the light and that light preceded matter in the cosmic timeline.

28. Tesla invented the Tesla coil, a device essential to sending and receiving radio waves. But in 1895, a fire destroyed Tesla's lab as he prepared to send a radio signal approximately 50 miles (80 km) to West Point, New York. Marconi relied on Tesla’s work and won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909.

29. Nikola Tesla said Edison "had no hobby, cared for no amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene."

30. Nikola Tesla's words were the only negative ones in the special edition of the New York Times on Edison's life, published the day after he died.

He had a peculiar love of the number 3 and all numbers that could be divided by 3. His maids would deliver him 18 towels and he chose to stay in hotel room 207, both of which can be divided by 3.

32. After Nikola Tesla lost control of Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, one of his many jobs included working as a ditch digger for $2/day.