There would only a few people on this planet who would react by saying “how strange” after they learn that they have become the richest person in the world. That was Elon Musk’s tweet after his net worth crossed $186 billion taking him to the top of the hill over Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on the illustrious list of the richest people in the world.
But apart from all the ‘moolah’ and the eccentric and lavish lifestyle, there’s a lot more than what meets the eye with the Tesla CEO. So, here are ten surprising facts about Elon Musk that many didn’t know.
Musk was born in South Africa
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria to Errol and Maye Musk where he spent most his childhood until he moved to Canada at the age of 17. As of today, Elon Musk holds the citizenship of three countries – South Africa, Canada and The United States of America. Currently, he resides in Los Angeles, California.
Musk created a video game at age 12, sold it for $500
Musk created a video game called ‘Blastar’ at age 12. He wrote the computer programming for the game which was science fiction inspired game similar to Space Invaders. The game was later published by a South African company who paid Musk $500 for its source code.
Musk dropped out of Stanford in two days
Elon Musk earned two bachelor’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania after which he moved to California to study Physics at Stanford. Surprisingly, he dropped out just after two days to found his company, Zip2 Corporation.
Musk has six children, all of whom are boys
Musk has six children, all of whom are boys. His first wife gave birth to a set of twins (Xavier and Griffin) in 2004 and then triplets (Kai, Saxon and Damian) in 2006. Currently, Musk and his first wife Justine share custody of the five children.
Musk also fathered a son in 2002 who died in just 10 weeks due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
In 2018, Musk began dating Canadian Singer Claire Elise Boucher and two years later had a son with her named X Æ A-12 Musk (pronounced x-ash-a-12).
Musk has founded eight companies to date
Elon Musk has founded a total of eight companies – Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Musk’s annual salary at Tesla is $1
Yes, Elon Musk just draws an annual salary of $1 from Tesla while most of his fortune comes from his share in stock. Although, there was a time when Elon couldn’t even make ends meet as he lived off just $1 buying hot dogs and oranges in bulk.
Musk has made appearances in Hollywood movies and sitcoms
Musk has made cameos in American sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory, Simpsons and South Park.
Not only that he also made an appearance in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 alongside Robert Downey Jr.
Musk is a big X-Men fan
The Tesla CEO is a big fan of the X-Men as he had once decided to name some of the robots at his Tesla facility after mutant superheroes like Xavier, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus and Iceman. Tesla wrote, “To us, these robots are like superheroes, so we figured they deserved superhero names.”
Musk wanted to sell Tesla
It was in 2013 that Musk almost sold Tesla to Google for $11 billion. At that time Tesla was not the company it is today and was leaking copious amounts of money for Elon. At that time, he reached out to Alphabet CEO Larry Page for a takeover.
He had even reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to sell the company but Tim refused to meet Musk.
Musk is the “real-life Tony Stark”
While Stan Lee, the creator of the famous Marvel character Iron Man, had based the character on American Businessman Howard Huges, Robert Downey Jr who played Tony Stark in Iron Man, based his portrayal on Musk.
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