Violet Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and the viceregal representative of the Queen in Right of Ontario, signed the Law on Declaring July 10 'Nikola Tesla Day' making it an annual local holiday, Serbia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The Law referred to Tesla as a „Serb-American inventor and engineer,“ recalling his patents were the foundation for the first hydro-power plant on Niagara in 1895. Twenty-five years on, all settlements in Southern Ontario had access to electricity.

Nikola Tesla was born in a part of the then Austrian Empire, today’s Croatia, in the village of Smiljan, to a Serb family on July 10, 1856.

He emigrated to the US in 1884 and became a famous engineer in designing modern alternating current and electricity supply system.

He died in New York in January 1943.