Jeff Bezos: 10 things you don’t know about the world’s richest billionaire – from the future Amazon CEO’s summer job as a McDonald’s fry cook to his space flight company Blue Origins
After graduating from Princeton University and working at New York City’s Wall Street, he ran Amazon out of his garage and held his meetings at Barnes & Noble, with ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos eventually helping to run the e-commerce giant
Here are 10 things you probably didn't know about the 57-year-old tycoon.
His mother, Jacklyn Bezos, gave birth to him when she was a teenager
Jacklyn Bezos, then Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, was barely 17 years old and a junior in high school when she gave birth to her son in 1964. At the time, her high school administrators told her she would not be permitted to finish her education there.
After she was allowed to return under strict conditions, Jacklyn graduated and later divorced Bezos’ biological father, Ted Jorgensen, after less than a year of marriage. Bezos was just over a year old at the time. She struggled to make ends meet while working as a secretary and, at one point, didn’t even have enough income to afford a phone.
Determined to make life better for her and her son, Jacklyn enrolled in college classes with professors who permitted her to bring her infant along. It was there that she met and eventually married Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who would give Jeff Bezos his last name and step in as his father.
Bezos’ biological father was once a circus performer
According to the 2013 biography of Bezos by Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, the now-billionaire’s biological father was a unicyclist and circus performer.
