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Chuck Feeney is an interesting guy.
He's got $2 million bucks but that's not interesting to anyone but himself and people he owes.
What is interesting to me, is he has given away over $8 Billion dollars to people who needed it.
In 1982, Feeney created The Atlantic Philanthropies, and in 1984, secretly transferred his entire 38.75% stake in DFS, then worth about $500 million, to the foundation. Not even his business partners knew that he no longer personally owned any part of DFS. For years, Atlantic gave away money in secret, requiring recipients to not reveal the sources of their donations. "Beyond Mr. Feeney's reticence about blowing his own horn, 'it was also a way to leverage more donations––some other individual might contribute to get the naming rights.'"
The largest single beneficiary of Feeney's giving is his alma mater Cornell University, which has received nearly $1 billion in direct and Atlantic gifts, including a donation of $350 million enabling the creation of Cornell's New York City Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island.
Through Atlantic, he has also donated around one billion dollars to education in Ireland, mostly to third-level institutions such as the University of Limerick and Dublin City University.
Feeney has given substantial personal donations to Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish nationalist party that is historically associated with the IRA.
He has also supported the modernization of public-health structures in Vietnam.
In February 2011, Feeney became a signatory to The Giving Pledge. In his letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the founders of The Giving Pledge, Feeney writes, "I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living—to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition. More importantly, today's needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater."
He gave away his last $7 million in late 2016, to the same recipient of his first charitable donations: Cornell. Over the course of his life, he has given away more than $8 billion. At its height, Atlantic had over 300 employees and 10 offices across the globe.
On September 14, 2020, Feeney closed down the Atlantic Philanthropies after the nonprofit accomplished its mission of giving away all of Feeney's money by 2020.
All but $2 million.
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Jean Ledwith King. Sadly, she just carked it. Perhaps not so sad -she was 97 and it wasn't like she frittered that time away........
(didn't we have an awesome people thread somewhere?)
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Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart was, and if anybody disagrees he'll kick their ass, even though he died in 1963.
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Did your folks, teachers, guidance counselors, maybe a shink, tell you to buckle down, pay attention, stay grounded.
I'd be leery of that last one, didn't serve Walter Summerford well...
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I knew this guy in high school:
The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 Languages (WaPo link)
He never mentioned knowing several languages, I don't think, but I remember that he knew how to add cadence and rhythm to gibberish to make it sound like a real language.
He also convinced me that Star Trek: the Next Generation was good, after I had given up on it following a few bad episodes. He reminded me of Q a lot.
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I could learn a bunch of languages like Vaughn Smith but then I’d have to figure out the damn apostrophes.