In a list of the great rivalries in the history of mankind, the enmity between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison would have to rate somewhere near the top. Tesla (a native of Croatia) began his life in the United States as Thomas Edison’s assistant until Tesla took seriously a statement of Edison’s that the latter brushed off as a joke. An embittered Tesla parted company with his employer. Later in life, Edison waged a “war of currents,” pitting his direct-current method of transmitting electricity against an alternating-current method that Tesla had conceptualized. During Edison and Tesla’s lifetime, a Quaker woman named Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Maggie Phillips used a board game to explain Henry George’s single-tax theory. She called it “The Landlord’s Game”; we know it today as Monopoly. It’s the most successful board game... More >>>