Nirmalya’s Blog

Surely, we’ve all (often?) asked ourselves, “What have I really achieved in my life?“. Chances are that the honest answer is (at times) not so pleasant. There are those whiz kids we know/hear of who (might) make us feel not so good/happy about ourselves. Here are a few more examples of things others accomplished when they were young. Compare if you may.

At age 17,
* Balamurali Ambati, became the world’s youngest doctor when he graduated from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York [1]
* my cousin, Shayon, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering [2]. He now works for Microsoft.

By age 20,
* Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft. [3]. In its first year (1975), Microsoft earned US$16,005. (The company earned US$36.84 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2004).
* Jonathan Clarke, became one of the youngest qualified commercial airline pilots in the UK (2002). [4]

By age 22, U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz won a record 7 Olympic gold medals, and broke another 7 world records! [5]

By age 25,
* Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic (May 20, 1927). [6] This achievment also won him a US$25,000 prize, which might’ve been a lot of money, way back in 1927.
* Soviet cosmonaut Major Gherman Stepanovich Titov became the youngest astronaut (Aug 6, 1961).

By age 26,
* Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel in space (June 16, 1963). [7]
* College dropout Steve Wozniak co-founded the Apple Computer Company (alongwith Ronald Wayne on April Fools’ Day, 1976). [8]

By age 30, Bill Gates became the first person ever to become a billionaire by age 30.

By age 32, (at the time of his death), Alexander the Great had conquered almost the entire known world.

By age 42, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest person ever to serve as President of the United States (1901-1909). [9]

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There are ofcorse, a few notorious instances of early starters. One such example, were the 12-year-old twins Johnny and Luther Htoo, who led the “God’s Army,” a Burmese ethnic militia. They also hold the current title of being the “Youngest Guerrilla Leaders”, according to the Guiness Book of World Records. [10]