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.
