On this day in 1856, a Serbian family living in the countryside of modern-day Croatia gave birth to a boy named Nikola. As a child in the frozen rolling hills of the Adriatic coast one winter, a strange show of sparks played their way across his beloved cat Macak's back. The combination of mystical winter luminosity and feline static tendencies created an anomaly of a most inspiring sort: bolts of biological lightning. The young Tesla never recovered. His interest in electricity grew to obsession, and eventually led him to a lonely death as a mad scientist after spending years as a reluctant celebrity amongst the New York upper crust. But the image of biological lightning was never far from his synesthetic mind.

Nikola Tesla would be the only soul, if one can be chosen, responsible for the Second Industrial Revolution that illuminated the night. His inventions are still highly functional, practical and prized. He laid out blueprints for and built machines never before imagined from scratch in his head, rarely with the aid of paper, and they often worked with precision. His ultimate goal of electrifying the atmosphere to send energy around the globe without wires died not for lack of innovation, but rather lack of funding. Always was his brain afire with imaginative bolts of biological lightning.

The sudden strike of inspiration is still enamored today. Our dreams have moved from the earth to the heavens. Tesla dreamed to energize the ionosphere, and we dream to colonize the solar system. Take a ride through the planets and watch a sunset from your favorite vista. Join an exploration crew launching from the backside of Pluto at near the speed of light to a binary star system next door and watch two suns set simultaneously. There is no maximum for dreams hosted in the intergalactic arena. Nikola made a playground of vacuum tubes and resonance chambers to revel in the infinite potential of electromagnetism. We build toys like rockets and rovers to frolic in the infinite space of the universe. In all of our ventures we must remember that which makes us human, our ability to harness inspiring bolts of biological lightning and ride them blissfully into a future without limits.