Elon Musk Facts You Probably Don't Know

1. On Christmas Eve in 2008, SpaceX and Tesla were literally hours from bankruptcy until Elon Musk was able to secure $20M from investors in those final hours. Two days later, SpaceX won a contract with NASA worth $1.6B. -u/ProbablyHighAsShit

2. Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Wozniak have all signed an open letter for a ban on Artificially Intelligent weapons. -u/Baldemoto

3. As a child Elon Musk was bullied so severely he once had to be hospitalized because of a beating from other students -u/Pagefighter

4. Elon Musk believes that the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth", describing it as "the greatest force for good of any country that's ever been" and believes outright that there "would not be democracy in the world if not for the United States" -deleted user

5. When Elon Musk was 28 in the year 2000 he contracted one of the most lethal forms of Malaria while on vacation in South Africa and nearly died, losing 45 pounds and taking six months to recover. He cites this near-death experience as the moment that gave him a renewed focus and energy. -u/jawny_

6. Elon Musk wanted Tesla's Model lineup to spell SEX: Model S, Model E, Model X. However, Ford owns the term Model E, so Tesla opted for Model 3 to spell S3X -u/SIThereAndThere

7. Elon Musk was not an original founder of Tesla Motors -u/dmc_2930

8. Elon Musk explicitly wrote into SpaceX's contract with Orbital Outfitters that the that the company's new spacesuits must look “badass”. -u/Toothpaste_n_OJ

9. Elon Musk paid off the rent for his house during college by hosting 1,000+ sized nightclub parties and charging an admission for entry -deleted user

10. Elon Musk stated in an interview that he "wants to die on Mars, just not on impact." -u/DioriteLover

11. Elon Musk was ousted as CEO of PayPal because he insisted on switching from Unix based infrastructure to Windows -u/DoTheEvolution

12. Elon Musk went to Russia to bargain for some refurbished ICBMs to build rockets for SpaceX, he was subsequently spat on by one of the chief Russian designers and called a novice. -u/vandenbeastmode

13. Elon Musk was an executive producer on "Thank You for Smoking" -u/pabeder

14. Elon Musk wasn't originally going to produce electric cars, but when GM took back all their electric cars and had them all crushed, Elon was surprised to see that owners cared so much that they held a candlelight vigil for them. As if the cars had been "executed" -u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams

15. Elon Musk chose to attend Queen's University instead of University of Waterloo (Canada's leading engineering university) because "there were girls [in Queen's]" -u/feb914

16. A tool shop owner paid $100 for a locked abandoned storage unit, only to find the Lotus Esprit submarine prop from The Spy Who Loved Me inside. He sold it to Elon Musk for $825,000. -u/_Big_Baby_Jesus

17. Elon Musk took a $78 million pay cut to his Tesla Motors salary in 2014, returning all but $1 -u/ShitGuysItsTheCops

18. Elon Musk had to borrow money to pay rent after he spent all $180 million from PayPal -u/startupsco

19. Elon Musk made a guest appearance in Iron Man 2. -u/limpinfrompimpin

20. SpaceX has two autonomous drone ships that serve as landing platforms for the Falcon 9 rocket and Elon Musk personally named them "just read the instructions" and "of course I still love you" as a nod to one of his favorite sci-fi authors -u/kevinaud

21. Elon Musk crashed a McLaren F1, known as "the greatest automotive achievement of all time," while it was uninsured -u/lrn1995

22. Elon Musk wrote and sold a video game, Blastar, in 1984. Musk, then 12, received $500 when it's source code was published in the South African magazine PC and Office Technology. -deleted user

23. Elon Musk attended Stanford college for 2 days before dropping out and starting Zip2, a company which he sold 4 years later for 307 million dollars -u/MUTHWA

24. Elon Musk works between 80 and 90 hours a week. -deleted user

25. Elon Musk once told his ex-wife that she was being 'emotionally manipulative' by grieving for their dead son. -u/Arelate