While having millions or billions in the bank may sound like a dream come true, massive wealth doesn’t necessarily come with sense or sanity. In fact, many of the world’s richest people have engaged in outrageously eccentric and bizarre behavior over the years. From spending fortunes on utterly impractical purchases to extreme physical transformations, here are some of the strangest antics by billionaires and millionaires.
Mike Hughes: Self-Made Rocket Man
Mike Hughes was a millionaire limousine service owner who developed an obsession with proving the Earth is flat. His unconventional mission led him to spend over $20,000 constructing a homemade steam-powered rocket out of salvaged parts. In 2020, the 64-year-old donned a red trailer park Thor outfit and launched himself 1,875 feet into the air aboard his contraption before crash landing with just a crushed knee.
Burt Munro: Records and Reconstructive Surgery
New Zealand cult hero Burt Munro earned millions from selling his life rights to a film studio. The eccentric spent much of his fortune modifying a 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle that he used to set land speed records in the late 1960s. At age 68, he underwent extreme reconstructive surgery and hip replacements just so he could keep riding. His story inspired the 2005 movie The World’s Fastest Indian.
Jocelyn Wildenstein: The Bride of Wildenstein
Swiss former wife of a billionaire art dealer, Jocelyn Wildenstein, checked into a clinic in the 1990s and reemerged looking dramatically different. She had undergone extensive surgeries attempting to make her facial features more feline-like, including injectable facial implants, eye lifts, a brow lift, and more. Despite spending millions on the procedures over decades, she was ultimately shunned in high society over her startling new “Bride of Wildenstein” appearance.
Gary Dahl: Investing in Pet Rocks
In the 1970s, advertising copywriter Gary Dahl struck it big with one of the most nonsensical millionaire-making novelty items ever sold – the Pet Rock. Dahl’s unadvertised idea of packaging and selling literal rocks as low-maintenance pets took the nation by storm. Over six months, he sold an astounding 1.5 million pet rocks at $4 each, making him an instant millionaire before the fad fizzled out.
Whether buying plastic surgery to look like a cat or launching themselves recklessly into the sky aboard homemade rockets, the ultra-wealthy clearly don’t let logic or propriety get in their way of pursuing the wildly eccentric. The super rich really can make their strangest fantasies come true.
