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You know that "ironic" birthday party your friend had at Bowlmor Lanes last year? Yeah, you and all your pals pigged out on wings and fries, got drunk, and quoted The Big Lebowski while throwing stones all night.

Congratulations, you were helping make Yasser Arafat rich. According Bloomberg News, the recently deceased Palestinian leader held stakes in a number of companies, including the one that owns the Village bowling emporium:

Arafat used a holding company to buy stakes that ranged from $285 million in Egyptian mobile-phone company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE and its affiliates to some $30 million in private equity, mostly in the U.S. These included $3.2 million in Herndon, Virginia-based Simplexity Inc., which makes electronic-commerce software, $2.1 million in New York- and Boston-based Vaultus Inc., which makes software for wireless computers, and $1.3 million in New York-based Strike Holdings LLC, which owns the Bowlmor Lanes bowling alley in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. [emphasis ours]


Way to go, ironically bowling hipsters. Next time play air hockey, because as we all know, the arcade game rental business is as clean as a whistle.
Arafat's Investments Included Dotcoms, New York Bowling Alley [Bloomberg, w/ hat tip to Find Profit]
Bowlmor Lanes [official site]