29 things you never knew about Bill Gates

Bill Gates was born in 1955, American business executive, who serves as chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the leading computer software company in the United States. Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with high school friend Paul Allen. The company’s success made Gates one of the most influential figures in the computer industry and, eventually, one of the richest people in the world.

Born in Seattle, Washington, William Henry Gates III attended public school through the sixth grade. In the seventh grade he entered Seattle’s exclusive Lakeside School, where he met Allen. Gates was first introduced to computers and programming languages in 1968, when he was in the eighth grade. That year Lakeside bought a teletype machine that connected to a mainframe computer over phone lines. At the time, the school was one of the few that provided students with access to a computer.

Facts about Bill Gates

·         Bill Gates aimed to become a millionaire by the age of 30. However, he became a billionaire at 31.

·         If Bill Gates was a country he would be the #63 richest on earth.

·         Bill Gates' children will only inherit US$10 million each, out of his net worth.

·         Bill Gates was arrested in New Mexico in 1977 for jumping a red light and driving without a licence.

·         In 2004, Gates predicted that the problem of spam email would be gone within two years.

·         Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs, all of them had no college degree.

·         6 million lives were saved by Bill Gates with vaccines and better healthcare.

·         Bill Gates continued to fly coach until 1997, when his net worth was already US$36 billion.

·         Bill Gates' SAT score was 1590 out of 1600.

·         $28 billion dollars has been donated by Bill Gates so far.

·         Bill Gates pays over US$1 million per year in property taxes for his house.

·         According to Bill Gates, by 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.

·         At a spending rate of $1 million a day, it would take Bill Gates 218 years to spend all his money.

·         Bill Gates wrote rival Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying. He kept it by his bed.

·         The only thing left on Bill Gates' bucket list is not to die.

·         Bill Gates Sponsors a Machine That Turns Poop Into Drinking Water.

·         Bill Gates bought Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester in 1994 for US$30 million. A few pages were used as screen saver on Windows 95.

·         When Steve Jobs accused Bill Gates of stealing from Apple, Gates said, "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

·         During a TED talk about Malaria, Bill Gates opened a jar full of mosquitoes onstage so the audience would be able to empathize better.

·         Bill Gates' Foundation spends more on global health each year than the World Health Organization of the United Nations.

·         Bill Gates changed his school's program codes so he was placed in class with mostly female students.

·         Bill Gates and other investors have secured a 'doomsday seed vault' to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago.

·         Bill Gates once said that he always gives the laziest people the hardest jobs, because they'll find the easiest way to do it.

·         As of 2016, Bill Gates could give US$10 to every human being on Earth and still keep US$3 billion for himself.

·         In 2013, Bill Gates admitted that the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command was a mistake, and should have been a single button.

·         Bill Gates has a McDonald's Gold Card for unlimited free fast food.

·         Bill Gates' net worth is 4.5 times as large as North Korea's estimated GDP.

·         Bill Gates was so addicted to Minesweeper, he used to sneak into a colleague's office after work to play.

·         In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett signed the "Giving Pledge," promising to give half of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetime or upon their death. Over 150 signers have joined since.

·         Bill Gates has sold most of his Microsoft shares and entrusts the investment of most of his money to one man, Michael Larson of Cascade Investment.