1.
Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III, the fourth in his family to
be given the name. Because his father had the suffix “II”, Bill was
called by the nickname of “Trey.”
2. Gates attended the exclusive Lakeside School, one of handful
schools in the US with a computer terminal at the time. Gates interest
in the computer programming was such that he was excused from Math
classes to pursue it.
Source: Pc Mag
3. Gates first computer program ever was a tic-tac-toe game.
Source: Flickr/aaron_anderer
4.
Gates hacked his school program to schedule students in classes,
changing the code so that he was placed in classes with
“disproportionate number of interesting girls.”
5. At 17, Gates sold his first computer program, a timetable system for his high school for which he pocketed a $4,200.
6. Gates graduated from Lakeside School with a score of 1590 out of
1600, and then went to Harvard in 1973 where he met Steve Balmer.
7. As sophomore at Harvard, Gates wrote a pancake sorting algorithm
which for over 30 years held the record as the fastest solution to the
problem presented in a combinatorics class by Henry Lewis.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
8. At Harvard he told professors that he would become a millionaire before he was 30. By 31 he was a billionaire.
9. In 1975, Gates dropped out of Harvard and joined his childhood
friend Paul Allen to form a company which they named “Micro-Soft.” The
hyphen fell off within a year.
Source: Flickr/Esparta
10.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft wasn't Bill and Paul Allen first
venture. They had come together earlier to create Traf-O-Data, a company
that made traffic counters built on the Intel 8008 processor.
Source: Ceonf
11. In 1977 he was arrested in New Mexico for driving without license.
Source: Wikicommons
12. During the first five years of the company, Gates reviewed every single line of code the company shipped.
13. In the industry, Gates developed a reputation as a fierce
competitor as well as not being reachable the phone or returning phone
calls.
14. In an interview, Gates conceded that Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake.
15. He paid $30.1 million at an auction in 1994 for the Codex Leichester, a collection of writing by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Source: Wikimedia commons
16. Committed in giving back most of his fortune through charity
work, Gates has reportedly reserved only about $10 million for each of
his children.
17. When asked why he was active on Twitter and not on Facebook, Bill
Gates, who is a friend of Mark Zuckerberg, said: “The friend requests
got out of hand…”
Source: Flickr
18. To show how much he appreciated his collection of Da Vinci
manuscripts, Gates said that if he would have to choose between his
legacy and rescuing the writings from a burning home, he would
invariably opt for the latter.
19. A money machine in the most authentic sense of the word would
show that Gates makes in average about $250 per second, $15,000 per
minute, and almost $20 million every day.
Source: Flickr
20. His net worth briefly surpassed $101 billion 1999, causing the media to call “centibilionaire.”
21. His wealth rival that of 40 countries put together, and not 140 countries like some people has been led to believe.
22.
From 1995 through 2008, Gates was the richest man on earth, before being
dethroned momentarily by Warren Buffet. In 2013, he recouped the top
position after seeing his fortune increased by US$15.8 billion to
US$78.5 billion.
Source: Flickr/OnInnovation
23. Thirty-two years after dropping out of Harvard University in
2007, Gates returned to his school to
receive an honorary degree, thus
vindicating a promise he had made to his father to one day get his
degree.
24. Towards the end of his life, Steve Jobs reportedly kept a letter from Bill Gates near his bed.
Source: Flickr/joi
25. Through his foundation, Gates has donated over $28 billion, the largest volume of capital ever mainlined to charity.
26. Out of spite, Steve Jobs is said to have left Bill Gates waiting for an hour at the NeXT offices before meeting him.
27. In recognition to his charitable contributions around the globe,
in 2005, Gates was knighted by Queen Elizabeth of England with the KBE
Order.
Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
28. During an interview, Gates mistakenly disclosed that Mark
Zuckerberg was engaged to his long-time girlfriend, Priscilla China. The
claim was promptly rebutted by Facebook’s Head of Communication, Elliot
Schrage.
29. Before their fallout, in the 80’s Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
enjoyed going on double dates with the women they were dating at the
time.
30. On December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark
Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in
which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth.
Source: Reuters
31.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been criticized by the Los Angeles
Times for investing in companies that have been accused of worsening
poverty, polluting heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not
sell into the developing world.
32. In a Microsoft ad launched in 2008, Gates appeared, alongside
Jerry Seinfeld, who engages in conversations with strangers before
walking up on a discount shoe store where Gates was buying a shoe.
33. It wasn't that rare, Microsoft workers attest, that the big boss
would interrupt a presentation saying: "That's the stupidest thing I've
ever heard!"
34. In 1994, Bill married his long-time girlfriend Melinda French,
with whom they have had three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine and
Phoebe Adele, and son Rory John.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
35. If he was a country, Gates would be the 37th richest country on earth.
36. After stepping down as Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer in
January 2000, Gates remained as chairman and created the position of
chief software architect for himself.
Source: Forbes
37. After stepping down as Microsoft’s CEO, Gates purchased the video
rights to the Messenger Lectures series called The Character of
Physical Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964.
38. Gates has been quoted as saying that he believes his wealth would
have a “meaningless impact” if invested in the efforts against cancer
rather than treating malaria.
39. One of the delights of his children is to tease him by singing the song ‘Billionaire’ by Bruno Mars and Travis McCoy.
40. Gates pays almost $1 million in property taxes for his home, a
magnificent house overlooking Lake Washington that is estimated to be
worth $125 million.
41. After being caught exploiting bugs in the OS
to steal computer time, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and two other friends
were banned from computer usage by the Computer Center Corporation.
42. Xanadu 2.0, Gates family mansion, boasts a 17-by-60-foot swimming
pool with underground music system and a floor painted in a fossil
motif.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
43. Melinda was a Microsoft worker in 1987 when she met Bill Gates who would become her husband and father of her children
44. In one of his failed predictions, Gates said that spammed email messages would be eliminated in two years, by 2004.
45. He has been quoted as saying that Microsoft would “never make a
32-bit operating system,” which the company, of course, eventually did
in 1992 with the Window NT.
Source: Tumblr
46. In yet another fit of short-sightedness, Gates predicted that
users would never need more than 640 kilobytes of memory on their PC. He
was wrong, of course.
47. What does Bill Gates, Julia Roberts, Brad Paisley and Frank Ocean
have in common? They all share the same birthday, October 28.
48. Gates is known for being the king when it comes to bargaining for the best prices on vaccines.
49. Gates wife and children are not allowed to own or use an Apple
product. A restriction was also put in place by Steve Balmer for his
family.
Source: Flickr
50. After leaving Microsoft, Gates founded several business ventures, including Corbis, TerraPower, and Research Gate.
51. Gates is an avid Porsche collector. His collection includes a
Porsche 911 convertible and a ‘88 Porsche 959 Coupe, which due to its
unknown crash rating required President Clinton to sign a federal law
for Gates to drive it in the U.S.
Source: Flickr/ Jules Antonio
