Chip Chick
As someone who’s been dwelling and spending time in New York for a while, my favorite fun fact is that pigeons, the little avians we see everywhere in the Big Apple, were actually once domesticated.
Thousands of years ago, people kept pigeons as pets and messengers, but today, they’re just sort of “abandoned” and living mostly as feral and wild birds.
However, many “pigeon apologists” have spoken out over the years. These are individuals who have long believed that pigeons are misunderstood and feel they shouldn’t be treated like garbage.
One of those people was renowned Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla. Something you may not know about Nikola’s life was that he was fascinated and, in some cases, obsessed with pigeons.
Nikola’s most recognized achievements involve alternating current electricity, specifically the invention of the alternating current motor and the Tesla coil.
He was known for being a very eccentric man, and an interest he was incredibly passionate about outside of his work was pigeons.
Nikola lived in New York City for over 50 years, and as I mentioned earlier, Manhattan is famous for its pigeon population.
An aspect of Nikola’s daily routine included lovingly feeding pigeons in the park and nursing any injured or ill pigeons back to health in the several hotel rooms he resided in.
Some historians say that during his later life, Nikola lived a rather lonely existence, which could explain why he was so infatuated with pigeons, which, for the most part, are calm and mild-mannered birds.
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