The ceremony, sponsored by the Croatian Parliament, was attended by the Assistant Minister of Science, Education and Sport, Mirko Markovic, local government officials, Serbia and Montenegro's Consul-General to Vukovar, Bojana Ristic, the head of the Independent Democratic Serb Party and member of Parliament, Vojislav Stanimirovic, and the Serb Orthodox Bishop of Osijek, Lukijan.
"May the bridges that Tesla built between the Serbs and the Croats never fall down," Council chairman Dragan Crnogorac said in his address.
Exhibits from the Nikola Tesla Museum from Belgrade, which holds Tesla's entire estate, were displayed in the lobby of the local cinema. The exhibition mainly featured photographs from various periods of Tesla's life and scientific work -- from his birth in the village of Smiljan near Gospic to his scientific achievements in the United States and Europe. A replica of his laboratory in the US and models of projects he worked on were also on show.
Tesla was born in Smiljan near Gospic, about 150 kilometres south of Zagreb, in 1856 and died in New York in 1943.