Tesla CEO Elon Musk celebrates his 45th birthday, a look back [Infographic]

Happy July 4th! Yet it turns out (to many of us Tesla superfans) that another big holiday just passed. On June 28th, Tesla Motors [NASDAQ: TSLA] CEO Elon Musk celebrated his 45th birthday. That said, let's take a look back at Muks's path to success, inspiring quotes, fun factoids, and a very cool infographic. In his short time on this planet, according to KnowStartUp, "Elon Musk is now considered Earth’s most future-oriented person.... best known for his role as CEO of electric-car manufacturer Tesla Motors, and as co-founder of online money transfer system PayPal, and of commercial space program SpaceX. But, there’s much more to know about this electrifying man." And let's not forget his role as Chairman of SolarCity and the possibility that the solar company may soon be part of Tesla Motors.

Before getting into his path to success and inspiring quotes (and our cool infographic), let's take a look at ten fun factoids about the real-life Ironman, Elon Musk, that you just might not be aware of...

1. Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. At age 12, Musk taught himself computer programming and created a video game called Blastar, which he sold for $500.
2. After graduating, Musk moved to California in order to begin graduate school in physics at Stanford University. He left Stanford after just two days, deciding instead to take advantage of the internet boom, which was in full swing.
3. Elon used to live throughout his college years staying on a strict budget of less than $1 a day in food. 
4. Elon Musk became a millionaire by the age of 28. After dropping out of grad school, Musk quickly established his first company – Zip2, which provided online newspapers with maps and business directories. He sold the company in 1999 for $307 million.
5. The SpaceX office was used as a filming location for the shooting of Iron Man 2 and Musk had a cameo in the movie. The director, Jon Favreau, stated that Elon was the inspiration for the character of Iron Man.
6. Elon Musk is a workaholic and he works almost 100 hours per week with a tight schedule managing both Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
7. In November 2013, Motor Trend named the Tesla Model S its car of the year. Musk took the chance to deride previous presidential contender Mitt Romney, who called Tesla a loser. Romney “was right about the object of that announcement,” Musk said, “however not the subject.”
8. Elon Musk owns a James Bond car, the car which was used in the 1977 James Bond flick "The Spy Who Loved Me”. 
9. Musk has aspirations for SpaceX to someday make space tourism and the colonization of Mars a realistic goal for mankind. 
10. Elon Musk has been married three times, having married (and subsequently divorced) British actress Talulah Riley twice. Musk has five sons (one set of twins and one set of triplets), whom he shares custody of with his first wife, Canadian fantasy author Justine Wilson.

So how can we get inspiration from Elon Musk? Taking a look at Musk's unique path to success and sampling some of his inspirational quotes might be useful. To that end, we uncovered a fascinating infographic from Tech in Asia* (via Tracxn) that describes Musk: "Many call him the new Steve Jobs. His product launches set off the same frenzy... From forming and selling PayPal to reimagining the space and auto industries to launching SolarCity, Elon Musk inspires entrepreneurs everywhere who dream of disruption." So let's take a look at this inspirational infographic below.

Click the red button below to enlarge the infographic...

ENLARGE INFOGRAPHIC

*Infographic: Tech in Asia (via Tracxn)