49 Fun Facts About Elon Musk

In which city was Elon Musk born?

Musk was born in Pretoria on June 28, 1971; the city serves as South Africa's administrative capital.

Musk holds Canadian citizenship from birth because of which relative?

His mother, born in Saskatchewan, is Maye Musk, born in Regina in 1948; that Canadian birth passed citizenship to him. Her father moved the family to South Africa in 1950.

What BASIC video game did 12-year-old Musk sell to a magazine for about $500?

Blastar, a space shooter written in BASIC, was sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for about $500; Musk had taught himself to program from a Commodore VIC-20 manual.

Which Canadian university did Musk attend for two years before transferring to Penn?

Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, enrolled him in 1990; he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, earning degrees in physics and economics.

Musk was accepted to a graduate programme at which university in 1995 but never enrolled?

Stanford admitted him to a materials-science graduate programme in 1995, but he deferred and instead founded Zip2 during the dot-com boom.

Musk's first company, Zip2, provided what kind of software?

City guides for newspapers were Zip2's product: online maps and business directories licensed to clients such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Which computer company bought Zip2 for $307 million in 1999?

Compaq paid $307 million in cash for Zip2 in February 1999; Musk's roughly 7 percent stake brought him $22 million.

Which company merged with Musk's online payments start-up in 2000 to form what became PayPal?

Confinity, founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, already ran the more popular PayPal service.

Which company bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002?

eBay's $1.5 billion all-stock purchase of PayPal closed that October; Musk, the largest shareholder with 11.72 percent, received about $175.8 million.

In 2017 Musk bought back which internet domain from PayPal, saying it had sentimental value?

X.com was the name of Musk's 1999 online bank that became PayPal; he bought the domain back in July 2017 and reused it when Twitter was rebranded as X.

In what year did Musk found SpaceX?

SpaceX was founded in 2002 with about $100 million of Musk's PayPal fortune; he took the titles of CEO and chief engineer.

How many times did SpaceX's first rocket fail before it finally reached orbit in 2008?

Three Falcon 1 launches failed (2006, 2007 and August 2008) and nearly bankrupted SpaceX; the fourth, that September, was the first privately developed liquid-fuelled rocket to reach orbit.

In 2012 SpaceX's Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to do what?

NASA had awarded the company a $1.6 billion resupply contract in 2008.

SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage back on land in which year?

On December 21, 2015, a Falcon 9 booster returned to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral after launching Orbcomm satellites; reusing boosters was the key to cutting launch costs.

What dummy payload rode on the first Falcon Heavy launch in 2018?

Musk's own Tesla Roadster, painted midnight cherry, flew as the test payload; a spacesuited mannequin named Starman sat at the wheel as the car headed into an orbit around the Sun stretching beyond Mars.

Which novel did Musk place in the glovebox of the space-bound Roadster?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy rides in the glovebox beside a towel, and the dashboard reads 'Don't Panic'; Musk has cited Douglas Adams's novel as a formative influence.

The mannequin in the space-bound Roadster was named after a song by which artist?

David Bowie wrote 'Starman' (1972), the song that gave the mannequin its name; the Roadster's stereo was set to loop his 'Space Oddity'.

SpaceX's 2020 Demo-2 mission made it the first private company to do what?

Put astronauts into orbit: on May 30, 2020, Crew Dragon carried NASA's Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS, the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since the Shuttle retired in 2011.

What is the name of SpaceX's satellite internet constellation?

Development began in 2015; SpaceX estimated the decade-long project would cost $10 billion.

Which two men incorporated Tesla Motors in 2003, before Musk joined?

Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated Tesla Motors in July 2003; Musk led its 2004 funding round, and a 2009 lawsuit settlement let five men call themselves co-founders.

How much did Musk invest in Tesla's 2004 Series A to become its largest shareholder?

$6.35M of the $7.5 million Series A came from Musk in February 2004, making him chairman and largest shareholder; he became CEO and product architect in October 2008.

Tesla's first car, delivered from 2008, was the first mass-produced all-electric car to use what?

Lithium-ion battery cells, 6,831 of them, powered the original Tesla Roadster; about 2,500 of the two-seat sports cars were sold before production ended in 2012.

Musk's car company is named in tribute to which inventor?

Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor of the AC induction motor, is the company's namesake; the original Roadster was driven by exactly that kind of motor.

Musk's 2018 "funding secured" tweet about taking Tesla private led the SEC to fine him and Tesla how much apiece?

$20M each was the penalty for Musk and Tesla in the September 2018 SEC settlement; Musk also had to surrender the chairmanship, which Robyn Denholm took that November.

Which solar company, founded by Musk's cousins, did Tesla buy for about $2 billion in 2016?

SolarCity was founded in July 2006 by Musk's cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive on his concept and seed money; Tesla absorbed it that November in an all-stock deal.

What did Musk unveil in 2013 as a cheaper way to travel long distances?

The Hyperloop, outlined in Musk's August 2013 'Hyperloop Alpha' paper, proposed pods racing through low-pressure tubes; he had engineers from Tesla and SpaceX sketch the concept.

Musk co-founded which artificial intelligence lab in December 2015, later leaving it?

OpenAI began as a non-profit co-founded by Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever; Musk left its board in February 2018 and later founded the rival lab xAI.

Musk co-founded Neuralink in which year?

Neuralink was incorporated in 2016 and first reported publicly in March 2017; Musk put in about $100 million, and the company later showed a macaque playing Pong through its implant.

What did Neuralink call the brain implant given to its first human patient in 2024?

Telepathy is the name Musk gave the first implant, placed in patient Noland Arbaugh in January 2024; by February he could move a computer cursor by thought.

Musk said frustration with traffic in which city inspired the Boring Company?

Los Angeles traffic prompted the December tweet in which Musk vowed to 'build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging'; the Boring Company was incorporated soon after.

The Boring Company sold 20,000 of which novelty item in a few days in 2018?

Flamethrowers at $500 apiece brought in $10 million within days; after customs objections Musk relabelled the product 'Not-A-Flamethrower'.

The Boring Company's first working transport system opened in 2021 beneath what venue?

The Las Vegas Convention Center sits above the 1.7-mile underground loop in which Teslas shuttle visitors between its halls; it carried its first passengers during the World of Concrete show that June, and a Resorts World station followed in 2022.

How much did Musk pay to acquire Twitter in 2022?

$44B was the price: Musk's offer of $54.20 a share was accepted in April 2022 and, after he tried to walk away, the deal closed on October 27 that year.

Musk's Twitter offer priced shares at $54.20; the figure was widely seen as a reference to what?

The number 420, cannabis slang, was the widely read wink in the $54.20 offer; Musk had used the same figure in his 2018 'funding secured' tweet about taking Tesla private at $420.

In what month and year was Twitter officially rebranded as X?

July 2023 saw the Twitter bird replaced by the X logo on the site and app; Linda Yaccarino had become CEO that June.

Musk was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for which year?

2021 was the year Time chose Musk, with editor Edward Felsenthal citing his influence on life on Earth and potentially off it; Tesla passed a $1 trillion valuation that year.

While hosting which TV show in 2021 did Musk say he has Asperger syndrome?

Saturday Night Live gave Musk the hosting slot on May 8 that year, and in his monologue he said he was the first host with Asperger's 'or at least the first to admit it'.

Musk appeared as himself in which Marvel film?

Iron Man 2 has Musk greeting Tony Stark at the Monaco Grand Prix and pitching an electric jet; Larry Ellison and Bill O'Reilly also appear as themselves.

What name did Musk and Grimes originally give their first child in 2020?

X Æ A-12 was the name announced at his birth in May 2020; California does not allow numerals on birth certificates, so the registered name became X Æ A-Xii.

Musk's first wife, Justine Wilson, is an author from which country?

Canada is her home country: born in Peterborough, Ontario, she met Musk at university in Kingston, married him in January 2000 and wrote the fantasy novel BloodAngel.

Which English actress was Musk married to, and divorced from, twice?

Talulah Riley, an English actress seen in Pride & Prejudice and St Trinian's, married Musk in 2010, divorced him in 2012, then remarried him in 2013 before a second divorce.

Which body, known as DOGE, did Musk lead de facto after Trump's January 2025 inauguration?

Department of Government Efficiency was the name, chosen so its acronym DOGE matched the meme coin Musk had long promoted; he left the role at the end of May 2025.

Musk's younger brother, who co-founded Zip2 with him, is called what?

Kimbal Musk, born in 1972, co-founded Zip2 with Elon in 1995 and later became a restaurateur, opening The Kitchen in Boulder, Colorado.

Musk's sister Tosca co-founded which streaming service devoted to romance adaptations?

Passionflix, which turns romance novels into films and series, was co-founded by Tosca Musk in 2017; she also directs many of its productions.

Where did Musk graduate before leaving South Africa?

Pretoria Boys High was where he finished school before emigrating; he had earlier attended Waterkloof House Preparatory and Bryanston High, where he was badly bullied.

After arriving in Canada in June 1989, Musk worked odd jobs including at a farm and what else?

A lumber mill in Vancouver employed him to clean out boilers, after a spell on a second cousin's farm in the prairies; he enrolled at university in Kingston, Ontario, in 1990.

What did xAI launch in October 2025 as an AI-generated alternative to Wikipedia?

Its articles are generated and reviewed by the Grok chatbot; researchers found it often reused Wikipedia content.

Musk's first vote for a Republican, in 2022, went to which Texas congressional candidate?

Mayra Flores, who won the June special election in Texas's 34th congressional district, got Musk's vote, which he tweeted was his first ever for a Republican.

Where in Texas did Musk settle after leaving California in late 2020?

Cameron County, home to SpaceX's Boca Chica launch site near Brownsville, is where Musk said he made his primary residence after announcing in December 2020 that he had left 'complacent' California.