William Henry III (Gates Bill)

1955 - Born on Seattle, Washington; birth of one of the richest U.S. citizens

1973 - Entered Harvard University and lived in the same place where Steve Ballmer, now the chief executive officer of Microsoft, also lived.

1973-1975 - During his stay at Harvard, he developed the MITS Altair, his version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer.

1975 - Left college.

1976 - Pioneered the microcomputer software company, Microsoft, along with Paul Allen; he became the chairman of the corporation.

1980 - Developed the Microsoft Disk Operating System or MS-DOS as requested by IBM as they planned to come up with a personal computer.

1994 - Oversaw Microsoft's licensing of Internet Explorer browser from Spyglass Inc. - married Melinda French on January 1.

1995 - Came up with the book The Road Ahead.

1997 - Founder and eponym of Gates Library Foundation.

1998 - Summoned for deposition in federal lawsuit charging Microsoft with criminal violations of antitrust law.

1999 - Wrote the book Business @ the Speed of Thought published in 25 languages and sold to over 60. countries - explained in his book how computer technology becomes a solution to business problems with new approaches.

2005 - He and his wife provided more than $28.8 billion for the foundation; the money is for benevolent purposes namely global health and learning.