Aristotle Onassis

Aristotle Socrates Onassis (, ; , ; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975) was a Greek and Argentine business magnate. He amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. Onassis was married to Athina Mary Livanos, had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas and was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Onassis was born in Smyrna (modern-day İzmir in Turkey) and fled the city with his family to Greece in 1922 in the wake of the burning of Smyrna. He moved to Argentina in 1923 and established himself as a tobacco trader and later a shipping owner during the Second World War. Moving to Monaco, Onassis fought Prince Rainier III for economic control of the country through his ownership of SBM and its Monte Carlo Casino. In the mid-1950s, he sought to secure an oil shipping arrangement with Saudi Arabia and engaged in whaling expeditions. In the 1960s, Onassis attempted to establish a large investment contract—Project Omega—with the Greek military junta, and he sold Olympic Airways, which he had founded in 1957. Onassis was greatly affected by the death of his 24-year-old son, Alexander, in a plane crash in 1973, and he died two years later. Early life Anatolia Aristotle Socrates Onassis was born in 1906 in Karataş, a suburb of the port city of Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey) in Anatolia to Greek parents Socrates Onassis and Penelope Dologlou. Aristotle had one sister, Artemis, and two half-sisters, Kalliroi and Merope, by his father's second marriage following Penelope's death (1912). Socrates Onassis became a successful shipping entrepreneur and sent his children to prestigious schools. When Aristotle graduated from the local Evangelical Greek School at the age of 16, he spoke four languages: Greek (his native language), Turkish, Spanish, and English.