Surprising Revelations: 15 Astonishing Facts About Elon Musk
Elon Musk manages to surprise us with what he does every day. Musk was inspired by his many passions and today runs companies that produce projects on electric and driverless vehicles, private space exploration, Mars colonization, solar energy and artificial intelligence. In this article, apart from the managerial role in Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City and Open AI companies that we frequently encounter; I wanted to focus a little on the unknown facts, from his sense of humor to his childhood.
1) His parents suspected that Elon was deaf.
As a child, Elon Musk would often wander off when his family talked to him. This led his family to think that Musk might have a hearing problem. Doctors removing his adenoid did not make any difference in his condition. Afterwards, it became clear that Musk was daydreaming. His mother says this about the subject:
“You get into his brain and see that he is in a completely different world. “I know he's designing a new rocket or something now, so I'm letting him go.”
2) He was bullied a lot as a child.
Growing up in South Africa, Musk was given a very difficult time by his classmates. So much so that, when he was 41, he had surgery to correct the deviations in his nose.
Was beat up pretty badly as a kid & left me w jagged septum. Harder to breathe as I got older, so time to fix.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2013
3) He designed and sold a video game in 1984.
This game, which he named “Blastar”, earned Musk $500 when its source code was published in the magazine. The aim of the game was to destroy an alien ship filled with weapons of mass destruction. In 2015, Google software engineers made the game code capable of running in HTML5. Musk says the following about this game, which he wrote when he was 12 years old:
“Even though it is a trivial and ordinary game, it is better than Flappy Bird.”
4) While he was at university, he was organizing parties to earn his pocket money.
While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk, who showed that he had a natural entrepreneurial side, earned his rent by hosting house parties. Musk, who lived in a 10-bedroom fraternity house with only one roommate, stayed sober at parties to keep things under control. In fact, his mother Maye once worked at the door to check who was coming in and out.
5) Dropped out of Stanford University 2 days after registration.
In 1995, he enrolled at Stanford University to study Physics. However, within two days, Musk decided that the internet had a much greater power to change society and dropped out of school to found Zip2. Zip2, which lasted until 1999, was a company that provided guides and maps to online newspapers.
6) He has 5 sons.
Musk has 5 sons with his ex-wife Justine Wilson. Their twins Griffin and Xavier were born in 2004, and their triplets Damian, Saxon and Kai were born in 2006. Unfortunately, their son named Nevada, born in 2002, passed away when he was 10 weeks old.
7) It wouldn't be wrong to say that he is the real version of Tony Stark.
Musk was the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s character Tony Stark in the Iron Man series. Downey Jr., who toured SpaceX headquarters with Musk in 2007, captured what he described as “accessible eccentricity.” When the first Iron Man movie came out, director Jon Favreau said Musk inspired his interpretation of Downey's character. Musk even made a cameo appearance in Iron Man 2.
8) He once came close to bankruptcy.
Musk started to have a hard time due to the great crisis that came in 2008 and the expensive cost of divorcing from his wife Wilson. Living off the loans he received from his friends, Musk invested his last $35 million in Tesla. Fortunately, things are smooth now; Tesla is worth more than $33.4 billion today, according to Forbes.
9) James Bond owns one of his cars.
In 2013, Musk bought the submarine car from the 1977 James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” at an auction for 866 thousand dollars. Stating that he was disappointed when he learned that it did not really turn into a submarine, Musk says that Tesla is trying to develop and realize the vehicle with electric power transfer.
10) He guest-starred in the TV series The Big Bang Theory.
In 2015, Elon Musk guest-starred in Season 9, Episode 9 of The Big Bang Theory. In the scene, Musk and Howard meet while washing dishes at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. The scene, which lasts about 2 minutes, closes with the duo sharing a half-eaten pumpkin pie.
11) He proposed sending an atomic bomb to Mars.
Participating in the Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2015, Musk talked about his ideas about Mars colonization. Stating that Mars will eventually be transformed into an earth-like planet, Musk said that the planet should be heated a little.
“There's a fast way and a slow way to do it. On the fast track, thermonuclear weapons are dropped at the planet's poles. Thus, two suns close to Mars can be created through nuclear fusion.”
12) The secret of success is being clean.
13) He believes that artificial intelligence is the biggest threat to humanity's existence.
14) He has a pretty bad sense of humor.
When it comes to humor, Musk can get surprisingly suggestive. For example, when Tesla Model 3 was named, Musk actually wanted to name it Model E. If he had done so, the models of the cars would have been S, E and X.
15) He consumed 12 glasses of Diet Coke and some coffee a day.
In 2007, Musk says he consumed 8 cans of Diet Coke and several cups of coffee a day to focus on working 100 hours a week. Musk, who started to think that everything was getting too crazy and that he was losing his peripheral vision, luckily put a stop to this trend.
Bonus: If you change your Twitter name to “Elon Musk” your Twitter account will be locked.