20 unusual things about Elon Musk that few people know about

Once thought to be deaf, wanted to bomb Martian nuclear bombs or AI is the biggest enemy of mankind are some of the unusual things about Elon Musk , the genius man considered Tony Stark's real life.

Elon Musk has always been a thinker and creative lover. From a young age, he used to dream and have shown his talent when coding a video game himself. In addition, Musk also loves business and has established his own career after graduating instead of waiting for the opportunity given by a certain company.

Elon Musk has always been a thinker and creative lover.

Many passions have inspired Elon Musk and today, he is managing pioneering projects and companies in new areas such as Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity and OpenAI. Although busy with work, Musk still has time to spend with his children, dating, watching Hollywood movies and playing games like normal people.

Here are 20 interesting facts and anecdotes about Elon Musk compiled by the Entrepreneur, which will give you a better view of a genius living in our time:

1. Parents thought Elon Musk was deaf

Elon Musk as a child.

As a child, Elon Musk often looked far away when his parents tried to talk to him and this made them think he had trouble hearing. Even his parents took him to see a doctor to remove lymph nodes in his throat, but the situation remained unchanged.

However, the truth is that Elon Musk is just dreaming. Mrs. Maye, his mother, said: "Musk often curled into thoughts and when he did, he looked like he was in another world. If I see Musk now, I will wear. just because I know my child is thinking about rocket design or something like that. "

2. When you were young or bullied by you

Growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk's school life was not happy when he was often bullied and beaten by classmates. Even at the age of 41, he had to undergo a nasal wall reconstruction, the result of past bullying.

Elon Musk is still trying to get on Twitter to share Tesla's ideas despite painkillers.

While waiting to recover after surgery, Elon Musk still tries to get on Twitter to share Tesla's ideas despite painkillers.

3. Writing and selling an electronic game when it was 12 years old (1984)

Musk, then 12 years old, received $ 500 after Blastar, a video game he wrote that was published in the South African "PC and Office Technology" magazine. In 2015, a Google engineer rewrote the source code of the game to make it playable on the HTML5 platform.

The goal of the game is quite simple when you only need to destroy a ship equipped with many destructive weapons of aliens. However, for a boy who was 33 years ago, writing such a game is truly admirable.

Talking about this game, Elon Musk doesn't need to be humble: "It's just a trivial game, but it's better than Flappy Bird anyway."

4. Pay rent by partying

Elon Musk was in school.

Elon Musk has a small entrepreneurial character. Not only writing games for sale, while studying at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), he organized parties and charged 5 USD per person. Thanks to that, he has a revenue to cover his rent. Elon Musk and his classmates were the only two people living in a 10-bedroom apartment and they covered the windows with garbage bags and painted light-colored walls. He also always tried to stay awake during the party and never drink too much alcohol. Once, his mother, Maye, knocked on the door when the party was going on.

5. He dropped out of school

In 1995, Elon Musk enrolled to study at Stanford University's physics department. However, in just 2 days, he decided that the Internet had a greater potential to change the world and dropped out of school to create Zip 2, a company that provided maps and instruction guides for the sheets. online newspaper.

6. Father of 5 children

Musk had five children with his ex-wife, Justine Wilson. Griffin and Xavier twins were born in 2004, while Damian, Saxon and Kai were born in 2006. Musk and Wilson have another son born in 2002 and named Nevada, named after a famous music festival. However, the sad thing is that Nevada died when she was 10 weeks old because of sudden death syndrome in newborns.

7. He is Tony Stark of real life

Elon Musk inspired Downey to portray Tony Stark successfully.

Elon Musk was the inspiration to create Tony Stark in Iron Man series. Robert Downey, the actor who played Tony Stark, was once visited by Space's headquarters, Elon Musk, in 2007. When the first Iron Man film was released, director Jon Favreau admitted that Elon Musk was inspired to Downey portrayed Tony Stark successfully. In the second part of the movie Iron Man, Elon Musk took part in a role playing and the audience saw him appear briefly in a scene.

8. He was almost bankrupt

In the midst of the Great Depression and an expensive divorce from his first wife Wilson, Musk had financial difficulties and had to borrow from some wealthy friends. He put the last $ 35 million into Tesla's electric car company to maintain his share of the company, despite having no cash to spend. After that, Tesla issued shares and was valued at over $ 33.4 billion, while Elon Musk's assets are currently $ 12.7 billion.

9. He owns a James Bond car

In 2013, Musk spent $ 866,000 in an auction to be able to own the Lotus Esprit submarine that appeared in a movie about 007 spy James Bond named The Spy Who Loved Me (produced in 1977). Talking about this car, Elon Musk said: "For a child in South Africa, it was truly amazing to see James Bond driving the Lotus Esprit, pressing the button and immediately turning it into a submarine. I used to be disappointed to know that it can't be converted like that in real life, but what I do now is upgrade it with Tesla's electric motor system and try to make it possible. transformable ".

10. Was a guest on The Big Bang Theory program

In November 2015, Elon Musk appeared on CBS's The Big Bang Theory program with the episode called "The Platonic Permutation". The film is set in a Thanksgiving kitchen and Elon Musk is wearing an apron for washing dishes.

"I was supposed to be selling turkeys but was demoted for being too generous in giving customers a sauce," Elon Musk said in the film. The episode ends with Musk and Howard, a movie character sharing a piece of pumpkin pie that has been eaten.

11. Use tree diagrams to learn faster

Elon Musk has a lot of knowledge in different disciplines and many people have wondered why he can study so effectively. In a reply on the Reddit forum in 2015, a user asked Musk about his learning.

Elon Musk responded as follows: "I am feeling my head is overloaded! I cannot do many things at a time and my ability is also worse than before. To be honest, I I think people can learn more than they think themselves, people often give up too early without trying.A little advice: use the tree diagram to systematize your knowledge, ie you Be sure to follow the basic principles such as learning about big stems and branches before learning about leaves, in other words, if there is no basic knowledge, in-depth knowledge will have nothing to stick on ".

12. The idea of ​​"5th type of transport"

Mankind has created 4 types of transport including roads, waterways, railways and airways. However, Elon Musk has always cherished the idea of ​​a fifth type of traffic that is Hyperloop high-speed pipeline traffic.

This new type of traffic will never be interrupted, unaffected by the weather and will allow passengers to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco (614 km) in less than 30 minute. It will also leverage energy efficiently and can even recharge itself through solar panels. This makes the cost of moving with Hyperloop pipeline lower than that of airway.

13. Want to throw a nuclear bomb at Mars

Elon Musk wants to create two small suns at the poles of Mars through nuclear energy.

In an appearance in a television show in September 2015, Elon Musk was asked by the host to share some ideas to turn the ambition of Mars geo-locality into reality."To turn Mars into Earth," Elon Musk said, "We need to warm it up."

When asked to explain more clearly, Elon Musk said, "There are many ways to do this. The fastest way is to drop nuclear bombs on the two poles of Mars." After that, Elon Musk explained what he meant by actually creating two small suns at the poles of Mars through nuclear energy.

14. Desire to cover the world with the Internet from space

On November 15, 2016, SpaceX's Elon Musk received permission from the US Communications Commission (FCC) to release 4,425 satellites capable of providing Internet to the world. Currently, more than 4,000 satellites in the project have been launched into Earth's orbit.

15. The secret to Elon Musk's success is always keeping it clean

When asked by a Reddit user: "Which daily habits have the most positive impact on your life?". Instead of familiar answers like "getting up early in the morning", "praying" or "meditating," Musk said the habit was "clean bathing."

16. Owning $ 70 million villas in Bel Air

Owning a villa in Bel Air, California's most luxurious estate, is not enough for Tesla founder. Musk currently owns up to 5 villas here with a total value of up to 70 million USD. Of course, these villas are environmentally friendly with the installation of solar batteries.

Over the years, Elon Musk has acquired many properties in Bel Air. In 2012, he bought a house here for $ 17 million. By 2013, he continued to buy another nearby house for $ 7 million. Later, this house was turned into a private school to teach Elon Musk's children. Since then, he has bought 3 more villas in the Bel Air area.

17. Believing that artificial intelligence is humanity's "greatest existing enemy"

Musk is a particularly sensitive person for advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, he feared that one day AI could become strong and threaten human survival if they were too smart.

In an interview, Elon Musk said that the nature of AI is not a robot but a computer algorithm: "It is important that if we only create simple algorithms, AI experts can stop them. However, if the algorithm grows and can make its own decisions, there is no way to stop them. "

Musk is not the only celebrity to fear about AI. Many technology leaders and other scientists also expressed similar concerns like Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking.

18. "The Hitchhiker's Guilde to the Galaxy" is a book that changed Elon Musk's life

The book changed his life.

In an interview in April 2017, Elon Musk shared that Douglas Adam 's book "The Hitchhiker's Guilde to the Galaxy" was a "turning point" that changed his life. The content of the book is about aliens who come to destroy the Earth, create high-speed tunnels and create a supercomputer that can know all the mysteries in the world. Elon Musk even put the name of the book in the reference section to create the software of the Tesla Model S.

19. Elon Musk is also very humorous

Elon Musk while introducing the Tesla Model 3.

When it comes to humor, Elon Musk also shows that he is gifted in this area. When naming the Tesla Model 3, Musk said the name he originally wanted to give this car was the Tesla Model E "for some humorous reason". The truth is that if named that way, 3 models of Tesla will be called S, E, X and will be SEX (sexual) respectively. Unfortunately, because of Ford's copyright lawsuit, Tesla had to rename the Model 3 model.

20. Drink 8 Diet Coke cans and lots of coffee every day

For a long time, Elon Musk drank eight cans of Diet Coke (Coca-Cola non-sugar carbonated drinks) and many cups of coffee a day. Musk said this is a way to help him stay awake and focused during 100 hours of work each week to build and develop companies.

For an adult, consuming more than 400 milligrams of caffeine each day can be dangerous to health, according to the Mayo Clinic study. For Elon Musk, the amount of caffeine he consumes each day is estimated at 336 milligrams, which is close to the level of danger to health.