CNN: Billionaire and Former Presidential Candidate Ross Perot Is Dead at 89

EXCERPT:

Ross Perot was born in 1930 in Texarkana, Texas, where his father ran a cotton mill. He graduated from the naval academy in 1953 and spent four years at sea. He started Electronic Data Systems in the early 1960s. It later became one of the world’s largest technology service companies processing data. Perot became a billionaire in 1994 when he sold controlling interest of EDS to General Motors for $2.5 billion. A couple of years later he started a second data processing company, Perot Systems Corporation. It sold to Dell in 2009 for almost $4 billion. In 1969, President Richard Nixon asked Perot to seek better treatment for U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam. He traveled to Laos where he met with ambassadors from Russia and North Vietnam. Perot made headlines again in 1979. When two EDS employees were taken hostage during a revolution in Iran, he organized and paid for a successful private mission to rescue the men and bring them home. Perot ran for president again in 1996, but this time he was barred from the debates, so he bought network air time and broadcast a series of infomercials to explain his personal vision for America. Perot won only 8% of the vote in 1996.”