Rupert Murdoch Unknown Facts

Rupert Murdoch is an Australian born businessman and the founder of News Corp, who turned media into a lucrative business empire.  With holdings in The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, Fox News and 20th Century Fox, Murdoch is one of the richest people in the world.  Here are some unknown facts about the media mogul who is considered the inventor of the modern tabloid.

Unknown facts about Rupert Murdoch

1. As an ambitious 7 year old, Rupert Murdoch would hunt water rats for their skin and manure, which he would then sell for sixpence in his town.  He would use his earnings to gamble in school.

2. Murdoch was an excellent cricket player and led his school’s cricket team to National junior finals.

3. His journalism career began with the Adelaide News, which he took over after the death of his father at the age of 22. Rupert Murdoch transformed the failing business into a successful newspaper.

4. He once counter bid for a New Zealand local newspaper, The Dominion, at the spur of the moment during a vacation and ended up winning the bid.

5. He was once declared dead by his own newspaper, The Sun, after digital vigilante groups Anonymous and LulzSec hacked into the newspaper website and published an article, claiming Murdoch died because of drug overdose.

6. He has appeared in two episodes of the hit series The Simpsons and his entrance line was “I’m Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant, and this is my skybox.”

7. Murdoch has a bad intuition towards social media, which was proven when Myspace, which Murdoch bought for $ 580 million, had to be sold due to its poor performance.  He also passed a chance to buy Twitter and warned investors against investing in it. 

8. He was awarded a papal honour award, Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great, by John Paul II in January 1998.

9. He once launched world’s first iPad only daily newspaper app, named The Daily.  Murdoch invested $ 30 million in building the app. The app eventually shut down as the company started losing money after the launch.

10. He was inducted into the TV Hall of Fame in 2014 for launching Fox Broadcasting Company and changing the television landscape with shows like The Simpsons and The X-Files. 

With a career spanning almost 6 decades, Rupert Murdoch saw many failures and controversies, but overcame them all and is now worth $ 21.9 billion.