Soros, George

1930 – He was born on the 12th day of August this year in Budapest, Hungary.

1936 – His family changed its name from Schwartz to Soros, in response to the Fascist threat to Jews. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because it has a meaning.

1944 – He was thirteen years old when Nazi Germany took military control over its wavering ally Hungary and started exterminating Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust.

1946 – He escaped the Soviet occupation by participating in an Esperanto youth congress in the West. He was taught to speak the language from birth. He is one of the rare native Esperanto speakers.

1947 – He immigrated to England and graduated from the London School of Economics.

1956 – He moved to the United States, where he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer.

1963 – He worked at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, where he attained the position of vice-president. He finally concluded that he was a better investor than he was a philosopher or an executive.

1967 – He persuaded the company to set up an offshore investment fund, First Eagle, for him to run.

1969 – He founded a second fund for him, the Double Eagle hedge fund.

1973 - He quit his position in 1973 and established a private investment company that eventually evolved into the Fund, when investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished.

1980 - He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford.

1984 - He founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media."

1988 - He was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid, but did later buy a number of shares in the company.

1992 – He is famously known for "breaking the Bank of England" on Black Wednesday. With an estimated current net worth of around $8.5 billion, Forbes as the eighth richest person ranked him.

1995 – He received the highest honor of the University of Bologna as the Laurea Honoris Causa.

1997 – During the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Later, he called Soros a moron. Thai nationals have called Soros "an economic war criminal" who "sucks the blood from the people".

2000 - He also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management.

2002 - A French court ruled that it was insider trading as defined under French securities laws and fined him $2 million that was the amount that he made using the insider information.

2003 – His former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote this year in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance.

2004 - He dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, and donated $23,581,000 to various 527 Groups dedicated to defeating President George Bush. Despite his efforts, Bush was re-elected to a second term as president in U.S. presidential election.

2006 - His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June this year. In addition, in December he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.