Aristotle Onassis (January 20, 1906 – March 15, 1975)

Aristotle Onassis (January 20, 1906 – March 15, 1975)

From Smyrni, Ionia, Onassis was a Greek shipping magnate and a successful businessman, who amassed the world’s largest privately owned shipping fleet, becoming one of the world’s richest people.

Born in Smyrni, he attended & was one of the last graduates of the Greek School of Smyrni in 1922.

After several members of his family were slaughtered during the Greek Genocide (1914-23), which was committed by the Turks throughout Asia Minor & Anatolia, he & his remaining family members fled to Greece.

By 1923 he had already left Greece and ended up in Argentina, first as a telephone operator, then an importer/exporter of tobacco and eventually, established his first shipping trading company in Buenos Aires.

After gaining his first fortune in Argentina, he expanded his shipping business worldwide and relocated to New York City, where he built up his shipping businesses empire, while keeping offices in Buenos Aires and Athens.

His private fleet of freighters and tankers eventually exceeded the fleets of most countries.

In the 1950’s he took over the struggling Greek National Airlines renaming it Olympic Airways. When told for legal reasons he couldn’t use the Olympic Rings, he simply added a 6th.

Following the death of his son Alexander in 1973, he established the Onassis Foundation.

Using the company’s profits and assets to create scholarship programs, build the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre in Athens, it also established the Onassis Library for Hellenic & Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, paid for the renovation of the libraries of the National Archaeological Museum, the Byzantine & Christian Museum and the Benaki Museum all in Athens, as well as countless other endeavours centred on Greeks arts and culture.