Elon Musk Trivia: 38 fun facts about the business magnate!

Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor.

Let’s see some intriguing facts about him!

1. Elon Reeve Musk wsa born June 28, 1971 n Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa.

2. He is the son of Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietician from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; and Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot and sailor.

3. He has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974).

4. His paternal grandmother was British, and he also has Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[

5. His maternal grandfather was American, from Minnesota.

6. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in the suburbs of Pretoria.

7. During his childhood he was an avid reader.

8. At age 10, he developed an interest in computing with the Commodore VIC-20.

9. He taught himself computer programming at the age of 12, sold the code for a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar, to a magazine called PC and Office Technology, for approximately $500.

10. A web version of the game is available online.

Musk was severely bullied throughout his childhood, and was once hospitalized when a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs and then beat him until he lost consciousness.

11. Musk was initially educated at private schools, attending the English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School.

12. Musk later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School and moved to Canada in June 1989, just before his 18th birthday, after obtaining Canadian citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.

13. Although at the time Musk had to register to become a Canadian citizen, Bill C-37, which came into law in April 2009, effectively made his Canadian citizenship retroactive to his birth since he was born in the first generation abroad to a Canadian-born mother.

14. Therefore, with the law change, he is considered to have always been a Canadian citizen by birth.

15. He is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; a co-founder, a Series A investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Inc.; co-chairman of OpenAI; founder and CEO of Neuralink.

16. He was previously co-founder and chairman of SolarCity; co-founder of Zip2; and founder of X.com, which merged with Confinity and took the name PayPal.

17. As of May 2017, he has an estimated net worth of $15.2 billion, making him the 80th-wealthiest person in the world.

18l In December 2016, Musk was ranked 21st on the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People.

19. Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity.

20. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the “risk of human extinction” by “making life multiplanetary” by establishing a human colony on Mars.

21. In addition to his primary business pursuits, he has also envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop, and has proposed a VTOL supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion, known as the Musk electric jet.

22. Musk owned a McLaren F1 supercar, which he crashed while it was uninsured.

23. He also previously owned an Aero L-39, a Czech-made jet trainer aircraft .

24. The 1994 model Dassault Falcon 900 aircraft used in the 2005 film Thank You for Smoking is registered to Musk (N900SX), and Musk had a cameo as the pilot of his plane, opening the door for Robert Duvall and escorting Aaron Eckhart aboard. Musk owns Wet Nellie, the Lotus Esprit from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. He plans to convert it into the functional car-submarine from the film.

25. Musk attended the Burning Man festival in 2004 and has said he first thought up the idea for SolarCity at the festival.

26. Tosca Musk, Elon’s sister, is a filmmaker. She is the founder of Musk Entertainment and has produced various movies.

27. Musk stated that he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact.

28. Musk is chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on providing solar-power energy systems in disaster areas.

29. In 2010, the Musk foundation collaborated with SolarCity to donate a 25-kW solar power system to the South Bay Community Alliance’s (SBCA) hurricane response centre in Coden, Alabama.

30. In July 2011, the Musk Foundation donated US$250,000 towards a solar power project in Sōma, Japan, a city that had been recently devastated by tsunami.

31. In July 2014, Musk was asked by cartoonist Matthew Inman and William Terbo the grandnephew of Nikola Tesla to donate US$8 million toward the construction of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe.

32. Ultimately, Musk agreed to donate US$1 million toward the project and additionally pledged to build a Tesla Supercharger in the museum car park.

33. Musk donated US$10 million to the Future of Life Institute in January 2015, to run a global research program aimed at keeping artificial intelligence beneficial to humanity.

34. As of 2015, Musk is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation[176] and a signatory of The Giving Pledge.

35. Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while both were students at Ontario’s Queen’s University. They married in 2000 and separated in 2008.

36. Their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at the age of ten weeks.[179] They later had five sons through in vitro fertilization – twins in 2004, followed by triplets in 2006 – all of whom they share custody.

37. In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley, and in 2010, the couple married. In January 2012, Musk announced that he had ended his four-year relationship with Riley,tweeting to Riley, “It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day.”

38. In July 2013, Musk and Riley remarried. In December 2014, Musk filed for a second divorce from Riley, however, the action was withdrawn. It was announced in March 2016 that divorce proceedings were again under way, this time with Riley filing for divorce from Musk. The divorce was finalized in late 2016.