Self-concerned prophetic writings are always a little wacky, both when they come shockingly true . . .

I wouldn’t be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter day in the future—there will be books written about Harry—every child in our world will know his name!

— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, p. 13

. . . and turn hilariously false:

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

— Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

There are few things funnier than seeing the above line graven in huge letters on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

Visit Google.com and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Let the countdown begin!

Despite what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have us believe about Professor James Moriarty’s height-induced demise, he’s still apparently alive and well today.  And teaching at a college near you!

And what’s more, the evil brainiac of Dynamics of an Asteroid fame is well-liked by his students.

And what’s more than that: there’s two of him!

. . . Had his 153rd birthday today.

Seriously.

If it weren’t for this amazing, inspired, amazing, misunderstood, amazing man, life would be very different today.

If Nikola Tesla hadn’t invented alternating current, you probably wouldn’t have electricity in your home.  If he hadn’t invented neon lights, Budweiser wouldn’t have glowing signs in every bar window in America.  If he hadn’t invented the radio, we wouldn’t have . . . the radio (really)!

Nikola Tesla invented the 20th and 21st Century. A ‘discoverer of new principles,’ Tesla was the sole inventor of the alternating poly-phase current generators that light up every town in the world today. He was the original inventor of the radio, and placed his ideas in print and demonstrated them before the public 5 years before Marconi. By the turn of the century, he had discussed the feasibility of television; he created an atom smasher capable of evaporating rubies and diamonds; he built wireless neon lamps that gave off more light than today’s conventional bulbs provide; he built precursors to the electron microscope, the laser and X-ray photographs. He sent his shadowgraphs to the discoverer of X-rays in 1895 as soon a Roentgen published his famous pictures. Tesla also created Kirlian-like photographs 75 years before they became famous. All of this took place before 1900!

— Harry Imber; ‘Nikola Tesla: The Man Who Fell To Earth’


Also: free energy, electro-gravitic propulsion, and death rays!