William Henry Gates III

Here's a timeline of Bill Gates life:

• 1955 - born in Seattle, Washington.
• 1967 - enrolled in the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school.
• 1967 - Gates enters Harvard as a pre-law major.
• 1975 - From his dorm room, Gates calls MITS, the maker of the world’s first personal computer.
• 1976 - Gates register the trademark “Microsoft.
• 1977 - Gates takes a second leave of absence from Harvard and sets up Microsoft in Albuquerque.
• 1978 - Microsoft’s year-end sales exceed $1 million.
• 1981 - Microsoft incorporates and buys the rights to the operating system “DOS” from Seattle Computer Products.
• 1987 - At age 31, Gates becomes the youngest billionaire ever. He meets his future wife, Melinda French, at a Microsoft event in New York.
• 1989 - Gates founds Corbis, an archive of art and photography from public and private collections.
• 1990 - The Federal Trade Commission begins an investigation into possible collusion between IBM and Microsoft.
• 1994 - Gates weds French; the couple goes on to have three children.
• 1995 - In July, at age 39 and with a fortune of $12.9 billion, Gates becomes the world’s richest man. Later that summer, Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer to the world, as part of Windows 95.
• 1999 - Gates publishes another best-selling book, Business @ the Speed of Thought.
• 2000 - Gates steps down as CEO of Microsoft.
• 2005 - Queen Elizabeth II bestows an honorary knighthood on Gates for his contributions to the United Kingdom.
• 2006 - Gates announces that his role as an executive at Microsoft will be phased out over the following two years.
• 2007 - Gates “graduates” from Harvard; the university awards him with an honorary degree.
• 2008 - Gates loses his spot as the richest man on the planet.
• 2009 - Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.
• 2011 - Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012.
• 2013 - Gates regained the top position as the richest man on the planet.
• 2014 - Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft and assumed a new post as technology adviser.
• 2015 - Gates, along with his wife Melinda, received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country.
• 2016 - President Barack Obama honored Gates and his wife Melinda with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts.
• 2017 - Gates was surpassed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.