13 Facts that YOU Do Not Know about Bill Gates?
13 Interesting Facts that YOU May Not Know about Bill Gates?
You probably know that Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft as the World’s richest man (although he was recently de-throne).
BUT DID YOU KNOW THAT……..
- His name is William H. Gates III.
- William Henry Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington.
- When he was eight, he tried to read the entire Word Book Encyclopedia and made it through the letter P.
- At around the age of ten. Bill marked “SCIENTIST” on a survey that asked him what he wanted to be when he was older.
- He wrote his first computer program at the age of Thirteen.
- His Scholastic Aptitude Test(SAT) score was 800(a perfect score) on the Math portion and 700 on the verbal portion.
- He read a lot. Favorite books including biographies like the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte(1769-1821) and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt(1882-1975)
- He was arrested in New Mexico in 1997 for a Traffic Violation.
- When Microsoft first began, he allowed his employees to work whenever they wanted!
- He met his wife, Melinda French, in 1987 at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan while she was a worker for the company. They would go on to get married on New Years Day in 1994.
- He is currently having a building named after him at Carnegie Mellon University, called the Gates Building of Computer Science.
- He was a Multimillionaire before he was Thirty.
- Today, he is an active part of the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” a philanthropic organization which is best known for arranging for vaccination of children in some developing countries.
Bill Gates still richest American, Forbes says
Things are on the up for US billionaires with more than half of them adding to their net worth in a year which once again saw Bill Gates as the richest of them all, Forbes magazine said yesterday.
Gates, founder of Microsoft, was the richest person in the United States for the 17th year in a row with an estimated worth of US$54 billion, up US$4 billion from last year.
No. 2 on the list was investor Warren Buffett, worth US$45 billion, up US$5 billion. Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s net worth was unchanged, in third place, at US$27 billion. Christy Walton, heir to Walmart founder Sam Walton’s fortune, was in fourth place with US$24 billion, up US$2.5 billion.
In stark contrast to the 2009 Forbes 400 list, 217 of the tycoons are now worth more than they were a year ago. Just 84 of the billionaires had a decrease in wealth.
In 2009 a whopping 314 members of the exclusive club had experienced a decrease in their wealth.
The top 10 gained US$24.9 billion. The same group had shed almost US$40 billion last year.
The total wealth of the group is up 8 per cent, besting the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which measured a stock market increase of just 1 per cent, Forbes said.
The Forbes 400 are worth a combined US$1.37 trillion, compared with US$1.27 trillion last year.
The price of admission to the list is back up to US$1 billion from 2009 when US$950 million was enough to make the top 400.
There are no new entries or drop-offs in the top 10 but the list shuffled. The Koch brothers, heads of energy and manufacturing giant Koch Industries, now rank above three other members of the Walton family and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of news and information company Bloomberg LP, who round out the top 10.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, No. 35, saw the largest relative increase, more than tripling his fortune to US$6.9 billion from US$2 billion. Fellow Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin join the list with fortunes of US$1.4 billion and US$1.15 billion, respectively. Born eight days after Zuckerberg, 26-year-old Moskovitz is the world’s youngest billionaire.
The oldest tycoon on the list is David Rockefeller Sr., 95, worth US$2.4 billion.
Media magnate Oprah Winfrey comes in at No. 130 and is one of 42 women on the list.
Automobile heir William Ford Sr. made the list for the first time since 2005, at the 385th spot with US$1 billion after Ford Motors Co’s stock rose 50 per cent and hit a 5-year-high.
California is the state with the most billionaires — 83 — among them No. 332 Meg Whitman, worth US$1.2 billion, the Republican candidate for governor of the state in November elections.
The full Forbes 400 list can be seen at forbes.com/Forbes400
fr:themalaysianinsider.com/world/article/bill-gates-still-richest-american-forbes-says/
Billionaires Gates, Buffett dine with China’s rich for charity
BEIJING: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said a meeting about charity he attended Wednesday with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and dozens of China’s super rich was “a tremendous success,” despite earlier concerns that the country’s newly minted millionaires would be pressured to give up their fortunes.
“Our hopes for this meeting were to learn about giving in China, and share our own views,” Buffett said in a news release from him and Gates late Wednesday. “We had a terrific exchange of views, and learned a great deal about the good work that is already under way.”
Some reports had said some invitees to the private dinner in Beijing were reluctant to attend because they did not want to be pressured.
Because of that concern, Gates and Buffett, who have campaigned to persuade American billionaires to give most of their fortunes to charity, issued a letter earlier this month saying they wouldn’t be pushing anyone to give up their fortunes but wanted to promote philanthropy.
The private dinner, in a mansion on the edge of Beijing modeled after the baroque 17th century Chateau de Maisons-Laffitte in France, drew 50 business and philanthropy leaders for a 90-minute discussion, the news release said.
“At Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates’ request, the guest list will not be made public, in deference to the privacy of their guests,” the release said.
The state-run Global Times newspaper said Wednesday that Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, chairman and CEO of property developer SOHO China, and Niu Gensheng, founder of Mengniu Dairy, were among the invitees.
Veteran actor Jet Li and tycoon Wang Chuanfu, who owns automaker BYD Co., were also among those likely to attend, the China Daily paper said.
There are at least 875,000 U.S. dollar millionaires in China, according to Shanghai-based analyst Rupert Hoogewerf, who studies China’s wealthy and compiles the country’s equivalent of the Forbes list. But over the past decade, the distribution of wealth has grown increasingly uneven — incomes averaged just $3,600 last year.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation office in China said earlier this month that some invitees to the dinner had asked if they would be required to pledge donations.
This prompted the two billionaires to issue a letter last week, carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, saying that while 40 super-wealthy American families have signed what they call the “giving pledge” at the urging of Gates and Buffett, the drive was not necessarily suited to China.
“We know that the Giving Pledge is just one approach to philanthropy, and we do not know if it’s the right path forward for China,” they wrote in the letter.
Some of China’s super rich are skeptical about Gates’ and Buffett’s approach. China’s wealthy don’t have to “copy the U.S. charity mode,” billionaire Guo Jinshu told Xinhua in a story Wednesday. “In China, an entrepreneur’s top responsibility is to keep his own business sound, to fulfill taxation payments, and create jobs. This is also out of a philanthropist heart.”
Gates and Buffett, who has pledged to give most of his fortune to charity over time with the biggest chunk going to the Gates Foundation, said they just wanted to share experiences with China’s successful businesspeople. But they noted the country’s newly minted wealthy were at a key moment when they could make a significant impact.
“People are doing some very good thinking about how their good fortune can have a positive impact on China and the world,” Gates said in Wednesday’s statement.
Jing Zhang, communications officer for the Gates Foundation’s Beijing office, said after the meeting that the office wasn’t answering questions about the event but a news conference was scheduled for Thursday.
Buffett is also in China to attend a series of events by BYD Co. to highlight the company’s clean energy strategy. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns a 10 percent stake in BYD.
At an event Wednesday in Beijing, BYD announced it would donate 1,000 sets of electricity storage systems for houses in remote areas of Tibet.
“We take for granted having electricity. Many families haven’t had electricity. It can change the world,” Buffett said. –
fr:biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/9/30/business/20100930082533&sec=business