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The Underappreciated Nikola Tesla, and Other Under-Recognized Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan January 12, 2020 32 min

Nikola Tesla - A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers — Nikola Tesla. Pintrest

35. The Death Ray and WMDs

Tesla and his magnifying transmitter. Wikimedia

Tesla also claimed to have invented a death ray that could explode or vaporize things at a considerable distance. Many suspected that he was responsible for the 1908 Tunguska Event, which flattened thousands of square kilometers of Siberian tundra with an explosion 3000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.

In reality, Tesla had nothing to do with the Tunguska Event, and there is no evidence that he had ever invented a usable death ray. However, after Tesla’s death, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had all his papers seized, out of fear that others might use them to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.