He amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. Onassis was born in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire to Greek parents and fled the city with his family to Greece in in the wake of the burning of Smyrna. He moved to Argentina in and established himself as a tobacco trader and later a shipping owner during the Second World War. In the mids, he sought to secure an oil shipping arrangement with Saudi Arabia and engaged in whaling expeditions.
In the s, 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 He was greatly affected by the death of his son, Alexander , in and died two years later. Aristotle had one sister, Artemis, and two half-sisters, Kalliroi and Merope, by his father's second marriage following Penelope's death 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. The Onassis family's substantial property holdings were lost, causing them to become refugees fleeing to Greece after the Great fire of Smyrna in His father was imprisoned and his business was transferred to Turkish ownership.
The rest of the family fled to Greece where they had to stay in an outdoor refugee camp. In August of that year, he arrived in Buenos Aires , Argentina, by Nansen passport , and got his first job as a telephone operator with the British United River Plate Telephone Company, [ 5 ] while following studies in commerce and port-duty administration at Aduanas Argentinas.
He later became an entrepreneur, creating an Argentine import-export company, going into business for himself and making a fortune importing English-Turkish tobacco to Argentina. After gaining his first fortune in Argentina, he expanded his shipping business worldwide and relocated to New York City , United States, where he built up his shipping businesses empire while keeping offices in Buenos Aires and Athens. Onassis built up a fleet of freighters and tankers that eventually exceeded seventy vessels.
