Rupert Murdoch

1931: Rupert Murdoch born in Melbourne, Australia.

1953: Graduates from Oxford, goes to work on Daily Express.

1954: Takes control of News Limited, an Australian-based company whose only asset was a majority interest in the number two daily in Adelaide.

1960: Buys the Sydney Daily Mirror.

1964: Launches the Australian.

1969: Buys the London News of the World, later the Sun.

Early 1980s: Buys the Times of London and the Sunday Times, Today, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, TV Guide and HarperCollins.

1985: Buys Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

1986: Buys six television stations in the US, creates Fox Television.

1989: Launches Sky TV, later becomes BSkyB, in Britain.

1993: Buys Hong Kong-based STAR TV, strengthens its position as the only pan-Asia satellite broadcast service.

1995: Announces partnership with three Latin America-based media companies to develop, own and operate direct-to-home satellite TV throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

1996: Announces plans for satellite TV in Japan.

1997: Launches FOX Sports Net, a join-venture sports channel to reach 62 million US households; unveils another US joint venture to purchase The Family Channel, which reaches 72 million homes.

1998: Rupert Murdoch and his wife Anna made papal knights by Catholic church - the award is for people of "unblemished character". Buys the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, announces divorce from Anna; conducts negotiations to buy Manchester United.