Bill Gates paid $30 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook

A closer look

When you possess an unfathomable amount of wealth, buying a yacht is boring; hoarding Renaissance homework is much better. In 1994, Bill Gates dropped thirty million dollars to acquire the Codex Leicester, an incredibly rare scientific journal written by Leonardo da Vinci. Rather than putting it in a normal museum, the Microsoft billionaire digitized it to use as a screensaver for Windows 95, proving rich nerds are unhinged.