Elon Musk is a name that the world has become familiar with in recent times. The founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX is one of the world’s most recognized business leaders and visionaries who constantly comes up with unique and creative ideas to shake the very foundation of the business. He is the CEO of world’s two most talked about and unique companies, SpaceX and Tesla, have gone on to revolutionize their respective industries and have become pioneers in each of their fields. And with Musk enjoying a strong social media presence, Elon Musk has built a brand that many companies and businesses can only dream of. In this article, we will be looking at some of the interesting and unknown facts you might have not known about this unique and controversial entrepreneur.
Unknown Facts About Elon Musk
- Elon Musk is currently the 9th Richest person in the world, with a net worth of $69.2 Billion.
- Elon Musk taught himself the basics of computer programming at the tender age of 9.
- At the age of 12, Musk built a space-themed PC game called Blastar. He sold the code for Blastar for $500 to a computer magazine.
- Musk first made his fortune as a co-founder of PayPal.
- Like Steve Jobs and other famous entrepreneurs, Musk’s official annual salary for Tesla Motors is just $1.
- Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, and didn’t become an American citizen until 2002, at age 31.
- In 2013, Musk was named Fortune’s “Businessperson of the Year” for SpaceX, SolarCity, and Tesla Motors.
- Musk has been referred to as a “thrillionaire,” a new class of high-tech entrepreneurs looking to use their wealth to make science-fiction dreams into a modern reality.
- Elon Musk has been married three times, having married and subsequently divorcing British actress Talulah Riley twice.
- In 2013, Tesla was in huge trouble, and the future was looking bleak, and Musk reached out to Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page for a takeover. He almost sold Tesla to Google for $11 billion, but the deal fell through. Tesla is now worth over $100 billion.
- After earning two bachelors’ degrees, one each in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Musk moved to California to enroll for Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But dropped out after only two days, to start a company of his own.
- Robert Downey Jr.’s persona in the Iron Man movies is actually based on Elon Musk, as confirmed by the director of the first film Jon Favreau. Elon Musk even played a small cameo in the second Iron Man film.
- Elon owns the Wet Nellie, a custom-built Louis Esprit submarine car from the James Bond film ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. He hopes to fuse the technology from Tesla Motors and the design of the car to make underwater vehicles a reality.
- Elon Musk is a big Star Wars fan, his Falcon rockets are named after the movie franchise’s Millennium Falcon.
- He is also a huge fan of Marvel’s X-Men, so much so that the factories at Tesla are named after X-men characters, including Xavier, Iceman, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Vulcan, and Havoc. He even named his son Xavier, after X-Men’s Professor X.
- Musk has five sons which includes one set of twins and one set of triplets, who he shares custody of with his first wife Justine Wilson. Elon’s five children and 15 other kids of SpaceX employees go to a private school he has set up in a mansion in California. The school is called Ad Astra which means ‘to the stars’ in Latin.
- In 2008, SpaceX was just days away from bankruptcy, when a $1.6 billion contract from NASA proved to be the saving grace. When the deal was confirmed, Elon reportedly cried.
- Elon personally interviews every new hire at SpaceX, and one of the things he looks for in candidates is how easy they are to work with. According to Elon, this is one of the most important factors in creating a strong team full of the right people.
- Musk is planning to build a vertical take-off and landing supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion, known as the Musk electric jet.
- Musk is no stranger the the entertainment industry. Musk has appeared in several television shows including the Big Bang Theory and the Simpsons. Musk has also produced several films including the 2005 film Thank You for Smoking, which he produced with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
- As a young child growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk was victim to severe bullying, and was bullied throughout his childhood. He was even hospitalized once after a group of mean lads threw him down a flight of stairs.
- Frustrated with traffic on the highway, Musk conceptualized and patented a technology called Hyperloop. A pod-like vehicle that travels through a tube. Allegedly, the Hyperloop will take passengers at a whopping speed of 1,200 km/h. Although it hasn’t been created, Musk has created an open-sourced platform to encourage others to develop the idea.
- Elon Musk is a workaholic, and works between 80-100 hours a week. His 18-hour day doesn’t even include a lunch break. He eats his lunch every day while answering emails or taking meetings.
- Musk was awarded the Gold Space Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 2010. The highest honour in the air and space world. Some of the prior winners of this award include famous American astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn.
- The Model S designed by Tesla Motors is the safest car ever made. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration awarded the Model S a safety score of 5.4 out of 5.
- In order to meet the demand for Tesla automobiles, Musk tasked the creation of a new factory in the Nevada desert called the Gigafactory. Once the Gigafactory is complete it will be 15 million square feet, making it the single largest building in the world.
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