Eccentric aviator and film producer, Howard Hughes was born on December 24, 1905, in Houston, Texas. The only child of wealthy parents, Hughes attended private schools in California and Massachusetts. By the time Hughes turned eighteen, both of his parents had died, leaving him an orphan with an estimated $871,000 inheritance. Hughes was also the beneficiary of a patent for a drill bit used in the oil and gas industry, which raked in revenue for the family business, Hughes Tool Company. Hughes left school as a teenager to manage the company and embark on other business endeavors with its profits.

In 1925, twenty-year-old Hughes married Ella Rice, and the newlyweds moved to Los Angeles. Three years later, the couple had separated, and Hughes ventured into the film industry, producing such movies as Hell's Angels in 1930, Scarface in 1932, and The Outlaw in 1941. In the process, Hughes discovered such formidable screen legends as Jean Harlow and Jane Russell.

Hughes obtained his pilot's license in his early twenties, sparking a life-long interest in aviation that led him to establish the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932. Three years later, Hughes set a world aviation speed record, and was awarded the Collier Trophy in 1939, the Octave Chanute Award in 1940, and a Congressional Medal in 1941.

In 1942, the Hughes Aircraft Company was contracted to design and build the "Spruce Goose" – a giant flying boat made of wood intended to function as a World War II troop carrier. Under immense pressure, Hughes suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944. Two years later, he suffered critical injuries when an experimental military plane he had been developing crashed.

The Hughes Aircraft Company saw escalating profits when it became renowned as a key defense contractor after World War II. Meanwhile, Hughes was preoccupied with avoiding taxes, and in 1953, created the Howard Hughes Medical Institute – a tax shelter where he transferred the assets from The Hughes Aircraft Company. In 1956, Hughes loaned over $200,000 to Richard Nixon's brother in an underhanded attempt to influence an IRS assessment of his medical institute. Hughes’s scheme worked, and he continued to make secret contributions of $100,000 to the Nixon campaign.

In 1950, forty-five-year-old Hughes began his ascent into seclusion, with the exception of his marriage to actress Jean Peters from 1957 to 1971. Hughes invested in Las Vegas hotels, gambling casinos, golf courses, a television station, an airport, and land, although he rarely ventured out in public. In 1972, he sold the Hughes Tool Division.

In 1970, Hughes left the United States, and began a nomadic existence, living in the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Canada, England, and Mexico. An insomniac, Hughes would work for days on end in a dark room, and subsisted on a very meager diet which caused him to become emaciated. He also had also become addicted to codeine, valium, and a number of other prescription drugs.

The symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which Hughes has demonstrated his whole life were now becoming more prominent, manifesting in an obsession with sorting peas by size and shape, refusing to cut his hair and nails more than once a year, and obsessing over trivial details. He also insisted on picking up items only with paper towel to avoid germs, and did not shake hands with anyone, which has been attributed by some of his biographers to being symptomatic of the tertiary stage of syphilis, which Hughes had contracted as a young man. The 2004 Hughes biopic, The Aviator, features a scene in which Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, burns all of his clothing in reaction his breakup with Katharine Hepburn, played by Cate Blanchett. However, biographers argue that this act stemmed from Hughes’s overreaction to his syphilis diagnosis in conjunction with his paranoia about germs.

On April 5, 1976, Hughes died while on a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to a hospital in Houston, Texas, where he was seeking medical attention. Following his death, several forged wills surfaced, in failed attempts to grab hold of the immense fortune Hughes had amassed.

YUDDY