The Most Interesting Things You Didn’t Know About Jeff Bezos
As the founder of Amazon and one of the wealthiest people in the world, Jeff Bezos’ name is regularly in the news. You might think you know a lot about him, but here are some of the most interesting things you probably didn’t know about Jeff Bezos.
He’s Been Interested in Engineering Since He was a Little Kid
When Bezos was only 3-years-old, he took his crib apart using a screwdriver because he had decided he was too old to sleep in a crib anymore. This trend continued, and by the time he was in high school, he had transformed his garage into a laboratory for all his inventions.
He Started His First Company in High School
Bezos has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and started his first business while still in high school. He ran an educational summer camp for kids, which he called Dream Institute. He had six kids attend and charged each one £600.
He Founded Amazon in His Garage
Like many of the biggest tech companies in the world, Amazon was started in a garage. The garage was so small that Bezos held meetings at a local Barnes and Noble bookstore before the company began working out of a two-bedroom house. Today, the company has offices and fulfilment centres all over the world and more than one million employees.
He Loves Space
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company. The company wants to make space accessible to everyone and believes that we need to go to space to access its unlimited resources and energy in order to preserve the Earth for future generations.
He Survived a Helicopter Crash
A few years after founding Blue Origin, Bezos was scouting land in Texas to test rocket engines and spacecrafts. To save time, he decided to look at the properties from a helicopter rather than by horseback as advised by the locals. A large gust of wind caused the pilot to lose control, and the helicopter crashed. They landed upside down, and the helicopter quickly filled with water, but fortunately, everyone survived.
He’s a Big Star Trek Fan
Bezos has been a massive Star Trek fan for his entire life and got to check off a major bucket list item in 2016 when he had a cameo in Star Trek Beyond. Because of the heavy makeup his character wore, many people didn’t realise the alien was played by Bezos.
He Didn’t Originally Want to Call His Company Amazon
Originally, Bezos wanted to call Amazon Cadabra after abracadabra, but others didn’t think it was the right name and thought it sounded too much like cadaver. He settled on Amazon, after the largest river in the world, because he wanted Amazon to be the biggest bookseller in the world.
He Owns the Washington Post
Bezos purchased the Washington Post for £250 million in 2013. His main goal was to increase the newspapers online presence as he recognised how quickly our society is moving online. In 2016, Bezos’ hard work paid off, and the paper became profitable for the first time in its history.
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