A few months after Bernard Arnault, president of fashion giant LVMH, became the world’s richest man for a short time, this list ushered in a huge change! In addition to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is firmly ranked as the world’s richest man, in November 2020, Tesla founder Elon Musk defeated Microsoft founder Bill Gates and became the world’s, second-richest man.
1. Designed a computer game at the age of 12
Children like to play games for granted, but Elon Musk has worked out how to write games while having fun! At the age of 12, he completed a Blastar computer game and made his first pot of gold. Not surprisingly, this game is the theme of the outer space war; that is Elon Musk’s life dream.
2. It is said that he is a dropout, but the fact he is a genius
It is often said that Elon Musk is a dropout like Bill Gates, but he decided to suspend school after two days of Ph.D. study! Elon Musk studied at Queen’s University in Canada in 1992 and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he obtained a double bachelor’s degree in economics and physics. Later, he applied to Stanford University’s Ph.D. program in Applied Physics and Materials Science, and dropped out two days after enrolling! Guess the reason? In an interview many years later, he said: “I went to college just to play more.” He dropped out because he wanted to start earnestly moving toward his dream!
3. Set up a company with a net profit of US$300 million
24-year-old Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk collaborated to complete a Zip2 computer software, which mainly provides online city navigation and guide information for news media. Zip2’s start-up capital was only US$28,000 funded by the father of the two. Then in 1999, Compaq Computer acquired Zip2 with US$307 million in cash + US$34 million in stock options. At that time, Elon Musk had already decided on three areas he wanted to enter in the future: the Internet, renewable energy, and space technology. He believes that these three fields are all factors that deeply influence the future development of mankind!
4. Born in South Africa, the eldest son of the family
Elon Musk was born in South Africa on June 28, 1971. His mother Maye Musk is Canadian and his father Errol Musk is South African white. He spent his childhood in South Africa until he graduated from high school at the age of 17. In order to avoid mandatory military service in South Africa, he returned to his mother’s hometown alone. This is the decision of Elon Musk alone. He decisively left his family, but it also means that he has lost all financial support. Years later, we discovered the reason for his desertion: he was a bullied child!
5. The nose was interrupted many times and it is still crooked
Elon Musk admitted in an interview that he suffered the worst bullying during his studies in South Africa! He was often beaten by classmates inexplicably, and his nose was broken too many times, causing him to have a jagged nasal diaphragm, and even caused mild breathing difficulties in adulthood. He has now recovered. His younger brother Kimbal Musk also confirmed this: “He was bullied terribly, but he still has to go to class as usual. He hates school.”
6. Founded PayPal, the largest online payment network to date
Although less used in Asia, PayPal is by far the most widely used online payment network in Europe and the United States! From the very beginning of binding bank accounts to the credit card encryption mechanism, PayPal’s revolutionary existence promoted the popularization of online shopping in 2000. And X.com, the predecessor of PayPal, was designed by Elon Musk. In October 2002, he resold PayPal to eBay, the world’s largest online mall, for $1.5 billion. With this fund, Elon Musk began his great ideal of rewriting human history.
7. Space X born for dreams
Remember the goals Elon Musk set in college? Before playing the Internet and establishing Tesla to study renewable energy, Elon Musk couldn’t wait to devote himself to the dream he most anticipated in his life-space technology. In 2002 he established a third company, SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies. His idea is very simple. Under the conditions of ensuring safety and cost-saving, explore everything in outer space, starting from the moon and Mars. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle produced by SpaceX is a very important invention in the history of human aerospace: it is the first liquid-fuel launch vehicle that can repeatedly use the first stage thruster in history, completely overthrowing the launch vehicle The established thinking that can only be used once! And this is also an important milestone for mankind to travel to outer space in the future.
8. Single mother and terrible father
Are you curious about what kind of tiger mother can teach such a good son who is motivated and filial? Maye Musk wrote in his autobiography: “Give children absolute freedom!” But the goodness of the three Musk children is not accidental but in the process of growing up, learning to cherish this strong and gentle mother. Maye Musk became a single mother at the age of 31. Yes, she was a victim of domestic violence. Regarding his father, Elon Musk commented: “He is a terrible father who can do the evilest things.” The two have not said a word for decades. According to foreign media, Elon Musk even told his wife Frankly: “I hope my children will not grow up under the poison of grandfather.”
9. There is a son whose name is illegal
Elon Musk’s current girlfriend is Grimes, a well-known Canadian singer, and visual artist. Grimes gave birth to a son in May 2020, and the two named his son X Æ A-12 Musk. Regarding this strange name, Grimes explained: X is a variable, Æ is the Elf language of AI artificial intelligence, and A-12 is the descendant of Elon Musk’s favorite fighter SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft. It represents speed but not violence. She also said that she wanted this child to choose her gender identity in the future, not being influenced by her name. Although this is the coolest baby name in history, X Æ A-12 Musk was unable to register because it did not meet the regulations. It is not yet known what the official name of Elon Musk’s son is, but his parents call him Baby X, which is also very cute!
10. The father of 6 children
How could the world’s second-richest man have only one son! Although Elon Musk kept this matter secret to the extreme, he and his first wife actually had 5 lovely children-Griffin, Xavier, Damian, Saxon, Kai, twins, and triplets. The appearance of the sons has not been made public since the age of 6. After all, my father’s career is not trivial; he once joked, “My family is very worried about whether they will be assassinated by Russia someday.”
11. The first wife did not want to be a vase and left
This Justine Wilson is Elon Musk’s first wife, she is the author of the best-selling fantasy novels “Bloodangel” and “Lord of Bones”. The two met at Queen’s University in Canada, and after 8 years of long-distance love, they entered married young love. In 2002, the child born by the two naturally conceived died of sudden infant death syndrome. So after that, there were 5 IVF babies born in 2004 and 2006! When everyone thought Justine Wilson was very happy, she filed for divorce in 2008; the reason was that her hair had to be controlled for any color she dyed, and she turned into a vase wife.
12. Two hot but short marriages
After the divorce, Elon Musk started an extravagant life. In 2008, he met Talulah Riley, who was 14 years younger! This beautiful British actor does not have many works, and is a supporting role in the masterpiece “Full Start” and “Pride and Prejudice”. The two got married a few months later. Their marriage broke down in just one year, but they remarried the following year, which lasted for another year.
13. involvement of Johnny Depp divorce
When the couple broke up in their marriage and accused each other of domestic violence and derailment, Johnny Depp made a video to prove that Elon Musk had been invited by Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard to Johnny Depp. Overnight in Pu’s mansion! But Elon Musk firmly denied that he had any close relationship with Amber Hild at the time, and the relationship between the two began after the divorce.
14. For the first time to carry people on a commercial spaceship
As of 2019, Space X and NASA have carried out 16 resupply missions to the International Space Station. On May 31, 2020, SpaceX completed another important space shuttle mission: two NASA astronauts flew to the International Space Station on the Dragon Spacecraft 2 spacecraft, and successfully recovered the Falcon 9 carrier rocket. This is the first time in the history of human space that a commercial space shuttle has been used to carry astronauts, opening the era of commercialization of space technology. The success of this empty mission instantly caused the value of Space X stock to skyrocket! After all, the last time the United States transported astronauts to the space station was nine years ago. In the past few years, the United States has been buying seats from Russia to carry American astronauts, and it is so unsafe. But more importantly, the dream of Elon Musk alone made all mankind begin to believe: Maybe one day we can travel in outer space as we please.
