Elon is hospitalized after a severe beating by a school bully, then blamed by his father for provoking the attack.

Elon buys a one-way ticket to Canada and leaves South Africa just before his 18th birthday.

Musk defers his Stanford graduate school acceptance to attempt starting an internet company in Silicon Valley.

Elon and Kimbal sell Zip2, leaving Elon with $22 million from the deal.

X.com and PayPal rival Confinity agree to merge, splitting ownership roughly 50/50 between both sides.

While Musk is away on his honeymoon, Levchin and Thiel orchestrate a coup and install Thiel as CEO of PayPal.

After being ousted from PayPal, Musk decides to found a company to build rockets and send humans to Mars.

After failed negotiations with Russian rocket sellers, Musk concludes he should build rockets himself rather than buy them.

SpaceX successfully launches its fourth Falcon 1 rocket after three previous failures threatened the company's existence.

After a series of failed CEO transitions, Musk takes over as Tesla's chief executive officer.

Musk secures last-minute private funding for Tesla, saving the company from financial collapse.

SpaceX successfully launches the Falcon 9 rocket and demonstrates a private rocket returning safely to Earth.

SpaceX launches a Crew Dragon capsule carrying two NASA astronauts, becoming the first private company to send humans into orbit.

Musk sends Twitter a buyout offer and publicly tweets 'I made an offer,' signaling his intent to acquire the platform.

Musk arranges for Twitter's top executives to be fired moments before they can resign, completing his hostile takeover.

This pool traces the defining headline events of Elon Musk's life, beginning with a violent childhood in South Africa and his daring escape to North America. It follows his early entrepreneurial wins with Zip2 and PayPal, including the dramatic coup that removed him from the company he helped build. The middle events chart his twin bets on SpaceX and Tesla, both of which nearly collapsed before last-minute rescues secured their survival. As his ambitions expanded, SpaceX achieved historic milestones in private spaceflight, culminating in the first crewed orbital launch by a commercial company. The pool closes with Musk's acquisition of Twitter, his most public and controversial power play, which capped his transformation from entrepreneur into one of the most influential figures on Earth.

The rise of Elon Musk from bullied child to tech titan.

Elon and Kimbal attend an anti-apartheid concert and must walk past a dead body that has been stabbed.

Maye and Errol divorce when Elon is eight, and Maye supports the family by working multiple jobs simultaneously.

Elon programs a video game and sells it to a computer magazine for publication.

Elon and Kimbal cold-call businessman Peter Nicholson after reading about him in a newspaper and are offered summer jobs.

Nevada, the infant son of Elon and Justine, dies of sudden infant death syndrome a few weeks after birth.

Shotwell and Musk travel to Washington and win a $3.5 million Department of Defense launch contract.

Musk sues NASA over a no-bid rocket contract awarded without competition and wins, forcing open bidding for SpaceX.

SpaceX's first Falcon 1 rocket explodes shortly after launch due to a fuel leak.

Tesla's efficiency consultants discover the company has no documented bill of materials for its cars and warn it will run out of money.

SpaceX's third Falcon 1 rocket fails, but Musk rallies his team to build and launch a fourth rocket within six weeks.

Google acquires AI startup DeepMind after Musk fails to block the deal, prompting him to pursue his own AI venture.

SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 into orbit and lands the rocket booster back on the ground, a landmark achievement in spaceflight.

Musk tweets that funding has been secured to take Tesla private, triggering a stock surge and an SEC investigation.

At the Cybertruck's public unveiling, a thrown metal ball shatters the supposedly indestructible window on stage.

SpaceX's Starship explodes during its experimental launch, but Musk declares it a success because it provided valuable test data.

This pool uncovers the supporting events that shaped Musk's companies and character without making the top headlines. It begins in his violent South African childhood, tracing his parents' divorce and his first small entrepreneurial instinct — selling a self-programmed video game as a teenager. The middle events follow the early years of SpaceX and Tesla, including the death of Musk's infant son, hard-won government contracts, and a string of rocket explosions that brought SpaceX to the edge of ruin. Later events mark dramatic public failures and escalating personal risks, from Tesla's near-disastrous financial maneuver that triggered federal scrutiny to the spectacular collapse of the Cybertruck's debut window. The pool closes with SpaceX's triumphant booster landing and the explosive but data-rich Starship test that Musk claimed as a victory.

The milestones and setbacks behind Musk's headline achievements.

Errol guilt-trips a 10-year-old Elon into moving in with him, a decision Elon later deeply regrets.

As a teenager, Elon experiences an existential crisis after realizing neither science nor religion can explain why the universe exists.

Maye settles in Toronto, and Elon's sister Tosca sells the family home in South Africa so the family can reunite in Canada.

Working at Scotiabank, Musk proposes a trading strategy that the bank rejects, convincing him he should never work for someone else.

Musk's X.com cofounder Harris Fricker quits after Musk refuses to step down despite employee demands for new leadership.

Elon and Justine marry despite opposition from friends and family, with the couple fighting throughout the wedding ceremony.

Gwynne Shotwell joins SpaceX and eventually becomes its president, becoming one of the few people to work long-term alongside Musk.

Musk abruptly fires Tesla founder Martin Eberhard after learning the company has no documented bill of materials for its car.

Talulah Riley files for divorce from Musk, but the two reconcile at the courthouse and resume their relationship.

Musk and Sam Altman cofound the nonprofit OpenAI to act as a counterbalance to Google's growing control over AI research.

Grimes gives birth to Musk's son X, while Musk's child Jenna comes out as transgender and the two become deeply estranged.

Musk disables Starlink internet service before Ukraine can use it to launch a drone attack on the Russian naval fleet in Crimea.

Musk orders Twitter employees' Slack messages and social media posts reviewed for disloyalty, firing those who expressed dissent.

After Yoel Roth resigns from Twitter, Musk attacks him publicly, triggering a doxing campaign that forces Roth into hiding.

Musk redirects his private jet to Sacramento on Christmas Eve to personally oversee moving Twitter's servers over the holiday.

This pool focuses on the internal turning points and revelatory moments that explain why Musk became the person he is. It begins in childhood, tracing the guilt-driven move to his father's house and a teenage existential crisis that set Musk on a lifelong search for meaning through technology. Early professional revelations — including the conviction that he could never work for others — hardened into a leadership style that fractured partnerships and marriages alike. The middle events reveal the hidden costs of Musk's drive: a founding CEO fired on a whim, a marriage that collapsed and briefly resurrected, and a new AI lab born from fear of Google's dominance. The pool then leaps to Musk's most consequential personal and geopolitical decisions, including his estrangement from a transgender child, his unilateral disabling of Starlink over Ukraine, and his ruthless purge of dissenters inside Twitter that forced one of its senior leaders into hiding.