Richest Person Ever
Not the space fellow or the Amazon guy.
Traditional lists of wealth tend to name individuals like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates as the world’s richest person. But the assets these magnates hold are primarily corporate stock, which is extremely suspect as a measure of riches. Stocks can fall precipitously at any moment.
The more traditional measure of wealth throughout history has been land ownership. By that measure, the richest person in the world is Australian Gina Rinehart who owns more than 9.7 million hectares of land. That’s about the size of Ohio.
Traditionally, land ownership is the most permanent form of wealth.
In the early 2000s, an argument was made that Queen Elizabeth of England was a larger landholder than Gina Rinehart, but the claim that the queen “owns” all the land in the British Empire seems rather tenuous.
Gina Rinehart and Queen Elizabeth did meet once, in 2011. Press reports did not reveal whether they discussed who owned more real estate. However, the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, was impressed by the size of one of Rinehart’s assets—her hat.
He’s quoted as saying, “You have the largest hat in Western Australia. That hat could poke someone’s eye out.”
There is no evidence that Ms. Rinehart’s weaponized hat was designed to intentionally harm anyone in the Royal family.