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1Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos funded a team that searched the Atlantic Ocean for discarded NASA rockets. By 2013, the team salvaged two rockets. After careful inspection, the team realized they found part of the rockets used to carry Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon on Apollo 11.
2. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is the first billionaire to fall off the Forbes billionaire list because of charitable giving. She said, “You have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.”
3. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook puts tape over his webcam. FBI director James Comey also tapes over his webcam and the American digital rights group EFF sells webcam stickers.
4. Alice Walton, the heir to the Wal-Mart fortune and one of the richest people in the world, has a history of reckless collisions. Her DWI arrest was expunged after the Texas trooper who arrested her was mysteriously suspended, and the statute of limitations was allowed to expire.
5. Billionaire Daniel Keith Ludwig had frozen his genetic material, believing his estranged ex-wife's daughter might challenge his will. 40 years later, and after his death, she sued the estate and lost, because DNA analysis proved he wasn't her father.
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6Samuel Curtis Johnson III
A billionaire heir named Samuel Curtis Johnson III of the SC Johnson fortune received only 4 months in prison for repeatedly sexually assaulting his 12-year-old stepdaughter.
7. Texas billionaire and former Presidential candidate Ross Perot wrote a blank cheque to fund and save the 500-year old Treaty Oak in Austin, Texas which was poisoned by a vandal in 1989.
8. Former billionaire Chuck Feeney secretly gave away his $8 billion fortune over many years until a business dispute inadvertently revealed his identity. He gave away his last $7 million in 2016.
9. In 2015, Forbes named entrepreneur/CEO Elizabeth Holmes as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Then in 2016, allegations of fraud collapsed her company's valuation, rendering her stock worthless and reducing her net worth to zero.
10. Bill Gates has received an honorary knighthood from the Queen but as an American he cannot use the title “Sir.”
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11Warren Buffett and Peter Buffett
Warren Buffett, worth $78 billion, gave his son Peter a single inheritance of $90,000 worth of stock at the age of 19. He never gave him any more financial assistance. Peter spent the money on recording equipment. Had he kept the stock it would be worth over $70 million today.
12. In 2006, Mark Zuckerberg turned down Yahoo’s $1 billion offer to buy Facebook at the age of 22 saying: “I don’t know what I could do with the money. I’d just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have.”
13. Google's former CEO Larry Page has a health condition that is slowly removing his ability to speak.
14. Billionaire Howard Hughes once bought a casino for the sole purpose of tearing down its trademark neon sign. Visible from Hughes' bedroom, it had apparently kept him awake at night.
15. A billionaire hedge fund founder named Jim Simons pays 800 New York teachers an extra $15,000 due to poor teacher salaries.
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16Elon Musk
As a child Elon Musk was bullied so severely that once he had to be hospitalized when a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs and then beat him until he lost consciousness.
17. Ray Dolby helped develop the first videotape recorder before the age of 21. After founding Dolby Laboratories, he became a billionaire by charging little for his technology so others paid him instead of developing their own.
18. Billionaire pastor Edir Macedo is accused of using $2 billion in donations intended for charity overseas from his poor followers to buy jewelry, TV stations, and other businesses for himself.
19. Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel's net worth is $1.5 billion at the age of 24, making him the world's youngest billionaire.
20. Lynsi Snyder, the 34-year-old owner of In-N-Out Burger (and effectively the USA's youngest female billionaire) has been the target of two attempted kidnappings and keeps a low public profile as a result.
21Sal Magluta
Billionaire cocaine smuggler Sal Magluta won 3 National Powerboat Championships and frequently appeared on TV despite being a fugitive. Nobody noticed for 6 years.
22. Billionaire Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, has donated over $2.3 million towards marijuana legalization.
23. As early as the 2040s, billionaire Yuri Milner plans to propel thousands of miniature satellites at 20% the speed of light by aiming minutes-long 100-gigawatt laser pulses at light sails. They will be set to arrive at Proxima B, the nearest Earthlike planet in the Goldilocks Zone of Alpha Centauri, by the 2060s.
24. Billionaire Shahid Khan from Pakistan, the owner of Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham F.C spent his first night in USA in a $2/night room at the University Y-YMCA, and his first job was washing dishes for $1.20 an hour.
25. Thomas Peterffy was told by NASDAQ that his algorithmic trading was illegal because it lacked a keyboard so he created a robot with fingers to type all trades on the keyboard which made it legal. The robot typed so fast it sounded like a machine gun.
