Jeff Bezos Building $42M Clock

Nobody spends money quite like Jeff Bezos. Case in point: The Amazon founder and CEO is building a 200-foot-tall clock deep inside a mountain near his West Texas property, the Wall Street Journal reports. Dubbed the "10,000 Year Clock," the device is designed to last millennia, playing chimes each day composed by Brian Eno. "It is a symbol of long-term thinking," Bezos explains, and a reminder to humans to think about the long-term future. "In certain ways we're a danger to ourselves."

Bezos is also preoccupied with space exploration—the clock isn't far from the launch site for his Blue Origin spaceships, and he funded a recent mission to find Apollo 11's sunken rockets. He has other eclectic investments, too. Four years ago, for instance, he bought into a Seattle glassblowing shop. "He really wants us to go big," the owner says. "We were trying to figure out where to open another shop, and he said, 'Go to Africa. Use the sand on the beach. Employ people.'" (More Jeff Bezos stories.)