July 10 is World Energy Independence Day and Nikola Tesla Day. Today they do not celebrate high-profile holidays, but it was on this day in different years that events took place that left significant traces in history: changes in power, natural disasters, military operations, technical innovations, political statements and human protests.
World Energy Independence Day
This day is a reminder of the need to change the global energy model. Its essence is to show that energy can be independent of war, blackmail, climate disasters and monopolies. It is an opportunity for every country, city, community, house to provide itself with energy that can be obtained locally from the sun, wind, earth, biomass or water. Energy independence is resilience to blackouts, invasions, price crises and climate shocks.
Ukraine felt this dependence literally: rockets hit TPPs, substations and lines. During the war, it became clear that energy is not only an infrastructure, but a field of security and survival.
Not only tariffs depend on energy independence, but issues of health, environment, climate, economy, security, access to education and medicine. If the power supply is centralized and vulnerable, one shock or failure is enough and the whole system breaks down. That is why the countries of the EU, USA, Japan, and Australia have been investing in decentralization and “green” energy for decades.
Building insulation, heat pumps, batteries, solar panels, home miniseries, microgrids, cogeneration are no longer elements of the future, but everyday things in communities that want to control their own destiny. And with each crisis, this trend only increases.
Interesting facts
In Germany, more than 40% of renewable energy is not produced by large companies, but by private individuals, cooperatives and farmers. This became possible thanks to the system of long-term “green” tariffs and priority connection to the network.
In South Korea and Japan, thousands of small energy companies have sprung up since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, building local solar and bioenergy plants. The movement is called “energy democracy”.
In Denmark, some cities have biomass heat supply systems that have completely replaced gas. Every new building is required to meet energy efficiency standards and is often equipped with heat pumps.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has more than 6 million home solar systems installed. This is an example of how decentralized solutions can cover basic needs even without a centralized network.
In the US, military bases are switching to local “green” systems to maintain autonomy in the event of disasters or network attacks.
Iceland is more than 85% self-sufficient in geothermal and hydropower, with virtually zero dependence on fossil fuels for domestic consumption.
In Nigeria, where the electricity grid is unstable, solar mini-grids are starting to be used massively in villages: it allows you to organize lighting, refrigerators, water pumps and even charging stations for phones without any connection to the main grid.
Never Tesla Day
This day is dedicated not just to the memory of the inventor, but to the awareness of the scale of his influence on the entire modern technical world. It was on this day in 1856 in the village of Smiljani (territory of modern Croatia) that Nikola Tesla was born – a person without whom there would be no electric age in the form we are used to.
He was a physicist, electrical engineer, mechanic, designer and visionary. Tesla devoted his whole life to working with electricity not only as a source of energy, but as a principle of the arrangement of the universe. His views were broader than technology: he believed in the possibility of wireless energy transmission, a global information field, and artificial lighting of the entire planet without wires.
Tesla’s main credit is in the development and popularization of alternating current, which became the foundation for the creation of large power grids capable of transmitting energy over long distances. In contrast to Thomas Edison, who promoted direct current, Tesla proved the superiority of alternating current, which is used in global power systems today.
Nikola Tesla patented more than 300 inventions. Among them: polyphase electric motors and transformers, the induction motor, resonant circuits, high-frequency generators, wireless energy transmitters, the principles of radio communication (independent of Marconi), and radio-controlled devices (first publicly demonstrated in 1898).
Some of his works were so ahead of time that they did not find practical use during his lifetime. Some research was classified or destroyed, others were used in further technologies without his name.
Interesting facts
Tesla spoke nine languages: English, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Latin. His memory allowed him to learn complex texts by heart.
In the 1890s, Tesla developed the idea of transmitting electricity without wires through an ionized atmosphere. Wardencliffe Tower in New York was to be the first such station. It was never completed – funding was stopped.
He was an opponent of x-rays in medical diagnosis, because he believed that the effect of rays on tissues was not yet sufficiently studied – and he turned out to be right: the first decades of the use of x-rays had serious consequences for doctors.
Tesla was not interested in personal enrichment and often lost money due to his reluctance to patent discoveries or transfer the rights for free.
In 1943, after Tesla’s death, the US government confiscated all his documents. Part was later returned, but part remained classified. That is why rumors and conspiracy theories constantly arise around his name.
Elon Musk’s company Tesla Inc. named in his honor, although Musk himself is not the author of this idea: the name was chosen by the first founders of the company, Martin Ebergard and Mark Tarpennin, in 2003, 5 years before the arrival of Musk.
In 1895, Tesla’s laboratory in New York burned to the ground. He lost all records, instruments and models. After this incident, he began to study paperless methods of fixation — he worked with memory and imaginary drawings.
Tesla spent the last years of his life alone, living in the New Yorker Hotel, eating bread, milk and honey. He died in 1943 in poverty, although the world benefited from his discoveries every day.
Historical events on this day
138 — The Senate of Rome recognized Antoninus Pius as emperor after Hadrian’s death. Antoninus became famous as a peaceful ruler: no large-scale wars were fought during his reign, but roads, aqueducts and fortifications were actively built, including the famous wall in Britain. It was during his era that the Roman Empire reached the peak of stability and economic prosperity.
1547 — the last official duel sanctioned by the monarch took place in France. It marked the end of an era when armed duels were considered a way to protect honor in an aristocratic environment. After that, the French crown intensified repression against the duelists, because the numerous deaths of nobles dealt a blow to the political stability and authority of the authorities.
1878 — for the first time in history, a football referee used a whistle at a match in England. Before that, referees stopped the game with a voice or a wave of the hand. The whistle quickly became a symbol of refereeing in sports and remains a must-have on the field to this day — not just in soccer, but in dozens of other sports as well.
1890 — Wyoming joined the United States as the 44th state. This is the first state where women received the right to vote even before the nationwide reform. That’s why Wyoming got the nickname “Equality State”. It is also famous for its natural beauty: Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, is located on its territory.
1934 — the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVS) was created in the Soviet Union, a power structure that later became the main body of repression, surveillance, mass arrests and executions. This day actually opened the era of the Great Terror. It was the NKVD that implemented the most brutal orders of the Stalinist regime, including the Holodomor and deportations.
1943 — British and American troops landed in Sicily. This was the beginning of the great Allied campaign in Italy during the Second World War. The Sicilian operation forced Mussolini to lose political positions, and Italy to switch to the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. The success of the landing was the first breakthrough in the fortress “Europe”.
1949 — a powerful earthquake completely destroyed the Tajik mountain town of Khait. Almost all of its 20,000 residents died. This is one of the most tragic natural disasters in Central Asia of the 20th century. The city was never rebuilt. The place of the tragedy remained in memory as a symbol of the geological vulnerability of mountainous regions.
1984 — during a press conference in Milan, Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky declared that he would not return to the USSR. He actually became a political emigrant. The artist’s decision caused a loud resonance, because Tarkovsky was not just a famous director, but one of the spiritual symbols of Soviet cinema. His choice was perceived as an act of resistance to cultural unfreedom.
1985 — in the New Zealand port of Auckland, the ship of the Greenpeace organization, Rainbow Warrior, was blown up by agents of the French special services. They tried to stop the protest against nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. Photographer Fernando Pereira was killed in the attack. This terrorist attack shocked the world, exposed French intelligence and dealt a blow to the image of Paris as a democratic state.
1989 — a miners’ strike began in the mining town of Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo Region. They spoke out against degrading working conditions, salary delays and the indifference of the authorities. The protest quickly spread to other mining regions, including Donbas. It was one of the first mass labor riots in the late USSR that undermined the monolithic system.
1994 — Leonid Kuchma was elected the second president of independent Ukraine. On the same day, Alexander Lukashenko was elected president of Belarus for the first time. The first gained power in the conditions of an economic crisis, the second began to form an autocracy that continues to this day. This date marked the deep divergence of the political trajectories of the two neighboring states after the collapse of the USSR.
1995 — Pope John Paul II published a special message to women in which he acknowledged for the first time that the Catholic Church had discriminated against them for centuries. He apologized for the historical injustice and called for a new dialogue. This gesture is considered a symbolic turn of the Church to a more open, more self-critical position regarding gender equality.
Lady Godiva threw off all her clothes for the common good – reducing taxes
On July 10, 1040, the Earl of Mercia, Leofric, while heavily intoxicated, promised to reduce taxes for the residents of the city of Coventry if his wife rode naked through the streets of the city on horseback. The count, knowing his pious and proud wife well, was sure that she would not agree to such humiliation. However, Lady Godiva, either out of great love for her people, or out of spite for her husband, accepted the challenge.
On the appointed day, covered only by her long golden hair, she rode through the whole city on horseback. Having learned about the sacrifice of Lady Godiva, the inhabitants of Coventry, out of respect for her, closed the shutters, locked the doors and remained in their homes. Not a single person went outside. So she drove through the city unnoticed. Impressed by the courage and self-sacrifice of his wife and the dignified behavior of the townspeople, the count kept his promise – the tax burden was reduced.
In memory of this event, poems were written, operas, cartoons and feature films were created. A monument to Lady Godiva was erected in Coventry – a woman with loose hair riding a horse. Her image even became part of the seal of the city council.
It is interesting that the British did not just preserve history, but embellished it. In 1586, Coventry City Council commissioned the artist Adam van Noort to paint a painting based on the legend. In addition to the beautiful horsewoman, the canvas depicts a man looking out of the window. There were no explanations for the picture, so the people will guess for themselves: it is supposedly a townsman who was spying on Lady Godiva. He was called “Peeping Tom” (Peeping Tom), and the legend was supplemented with a new episode – as soon as Tom saw a naked woman, he immediately went blind.
Every year on the 10th of July a festival is held in Coventry near the Lady Godiva monument. The music of the 11th century sounds in the city park, games and contests are held, including the competition for the best Lady Godiva. It involves women in 11th century dress with long golden hair. And recently, it has even become fashionable to follow the heroine and take naked horseback rides. Times change and so do social morals.
Of course, no documents have survived to confirm this legend. However, according to historians, at the end of the 13th century, King Edward I himself decided to check whether this was really the case. And, having studied the annals, he came to the conclusion: since 1057, when Earl Leofric died, taxes had not really been collected in Coventry for a long time. As the people said, Lady Godiva threw off all her clothes for the common good.
The last duel officially authorized by the King of France
On July 10, 1547, the last duel officially authorized by the king took place in France – a duel between two people, one of whom defends his honor. The historical predecessor of the duel is the court duel, which was widespread in the Middle Ages. And that, in its turn, comes from the ancient pagan tradition of “divine judgment”, which was based on the idea: in a fight that is equal from a technical point of view, the one who is right wins, because the gods cannot allow otherwise. Later, knightly tournaments appeared, but the real basis of the duel was the concept of honor and dignity.
As a separate way of challenging the offender to answer for the insult, the duel originated around the 14th century in Italy. Its forms were different: “immobile duel”, “at a noble distance”, “put a gun to the forehead”, “muzzle to muzzle” and even women’s duels. All of them passed according to strict rules and were even legalized at the level of law. It was a kind of “regulated bloodshed”, which over time became so popular that it forced European rulers to ban dueling on pain of severe punishment. Famous duelists include: Otto von Bismarck, Otto Skorzeny, Benito Mussolini and other famous people.
Duelists on our territory often had much tougher conditions than Europeans. If in Europe the accepted distance for firing a pistol was 30 steps, then in our country it is 20, 15 or even 10. Among the officers who served in the Caucasus, there was a custom of a duel on the edge of the abyss – the opponents stood with their backs to the abyss and took a step back every time after a shot. And there were legends about “Russian roulette” in general: everyone received a gun loaded with only one bullet, but no one knew from whom exactly. Then the duelists simultaneously pulled the trigger.
Today dueling has lost its popularity, but from time to time there are proposals in various countries for the adoption of the Dueling Code – more as a symbol of cultural heritage than as a real legal mechanism.
Birthday of the author of the emoticon with a smile
American artist and designer Harvey Ball was born on July 10, 1921 in the USA. In December 1963, he was the first to depict a smile in the form of two dots and an arc in a yellow circle.
Ball performed this work for an insurance company that sought to supplement its corporate culture with a symbol that would personify positive emotions. Unaware of how popular his creation would later become, the artist did not patent the symbol and received only $45 for the work. The whole development took him no more than 10 minutes. The designer himself said this about his creation: “I never cared about the rights to the emoticon. I just wanted it to bring joy and make people smile.”
In 1999, Ball founded a charity that began licensing the use of emoticons, with all license fees going to charity.
And one more fact — precisely thanks to the artist Harvey Ball, the World Smile Day is celebrated every year on the first Friday of October, July 25, and since 1980, also on April 12. The creator of the emoticon and the founder of the holiday was convinced that this day must be dedicated to a good mood.
Recognition of Donetsk as the best city in Ukraine for doing business
On July 10, 2013, Donetsk was recognized as the best city in Ukraine for doing business, according to the results of the Forbes magazine rating.
In the evaluation process, the following factors were taken into account: Donetsk became one of the few cities that managed to stop population decline. The rating was based on the following indicators: revenues of the city budget over the past three years, the amount of direct foreign investment in the city’s economy over the past year (which amounted to 1.7 billion US dollars), the level of housing security (per 1,000 inhabitants), the receipt of a single tax from individual entrepreneurs to the city budget, the amount of income from small businesses and the growth of industrial production.
