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1Elizabeth Holmes
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.
2. Bill Gates has received an honorary knighthood from the Queen but as an American he cannot use the title “Sir.”
3. 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.
4. 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.”
5. Google's former CEO Larry Page has a health condition that is slowly removing his ability to speak.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Howard Hughes
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.
7. A billionaire hedge fund founder named Jim Simons pays 800 New York teachers an extra $15,000 due to poor teacher salaries.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
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11Evan Spiegel
Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel's net worth is $1.5 billion at the age of 24, making him the world's youngest billionaire.
12. 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.
13. Billionaire cocaine smuggler Sal Magluta won 3 National Powerboat Championships and frequently appeared on TV despite being a fugitive. Nobody noticed for 6 years.
14. Billionaire Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, has donated over $2.3 million towards marijuana legalization.
15. 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.
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16Shahid Khan
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.
17. 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.
18. Billionaire Haim Saban made his fortune importing and adapting Japanese productions such as the Power Rangers. He wrote the theme song for the Power Rangers movie himself under a pseudonym.
19. Billionaire John Goodman who was on house arrest in Florida was allowed in 2013 to charter a plane and fly himself and his guards to Texas to see his ailing mother.
20. When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004, he bragged about people trusting his site with personal information. He called the users "dumb f*cks" for trusting him.
21Sean Parker
Billionaire Sean Parker was considered a genius at a young age. In high school, he was recruited by the CIA after winning a computer science fair and was making $80,000 per year by the time he was a senior.
22. In 2010, an Azerbaijani billionaire named Ibrahim Ibrahimov decided to build an artificial archipelago with a $100 billion city on it, which would include the new world’s tallest building. His vision was to make a new Venice. After oil prices crashed in 2015, the project was stalled and his vision still remains unfinished.
23. Billionaire Tom Perkins spelled out a secret message using nautical code flags strung along the length of his enormous yacht. The message? "Rarely does one have the privilege of witnessing vulgar ostentation displayed upon such a scale."
24. Broadcom billionaire Henry Nicholas built a secret sex lair under his house, was charged with distributing cocaine and meth, and once smoked so much weed on his jet that his pilot had to put on an oxygen mask.
25. Billionaire Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan has had his name carved out in the Saudi Arabian desert so that it can be seen from space.
