Registry of Existential Status
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Check the current status of a public figure

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Status record

Bill Gates Business

TRIES TO REBOOT VILLAGE CHURCH TOWER

Bell ringers confirm the Windows startup chime is now correct to the note, and will play at every hour

Existence confidence provisional
A generated photo of an anonymous stranger. It is not the person named.
Bill Gates measures a window at the town hall in Ypres while holding a cup of tea, plotting the exact geometry needed for the frame.
Location
Behind the bell tower of a village church, a short jeepney ride from a Manila mall food court
Currently
Bell ringer's apprentice, trying to recover the startup chime
Last confirmed sighting
Tuesday, 11:59, as the tower clock struck an hourglass
Observations
Once rebooted a lighthouse by standing near it and sighing.

What Bill Gates is known for has leaked into the six bells of St Oswin's in a Yorkshire village, and every hour now rings the Windows startup chime. He has taken a room in the vestry and is attempting to retrieve it with a long rope and a spare set of rimmed glasses.

The village has adjusted. The WI now schedules jam sales around the chime, and the vicar says 'Are you sure?' before each blessing. Farmers have stopped setting alarms, and cows queue at the gate at noon, waiting for the hourglass to finish.

'I deliver the post and I've timed my round by those bells for eleven years,' said Brenda, a postwoman. 'Now at ten past nine they play that little rising tune and every door in the lane seems to restart. He's polite, but he keeps asking if I've tried turning the tower off and on again.'

Guidance for the public

Please do not click the bells repeatedly; the tower is thinking.

Actual status (not satire) No death recorded as of 22 October 2026. Born 28 October 1955. Source: Wikidata

E&OE. The Registry accepts no liability for misclassification, temporal displacement or loss of personhood arising from this record. Photographs are computer-generated approximations and almost guaranteed to show a different person entirely.