George Peter Angelos was born in Pittsburgh on July 4,1929, the son of John and Frances Peter Angelos, who immigrated to the United States from Menetes, Karpathos, Greece.
34 Facts About Peter Angelos
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Peter Angelos' family settled in the working-class neighborhood of Highlandtown, Baltimore, and lived in a row house.
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Peter Angelos then attended law school at the University of Baltimore School of Law, taking night classes while he worked in his family's tavern.
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Peter Angelos graduated from law school in 1960 and was named class valedictorian.
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Peter Angelos passed the bar in 1961 and opened an office specializing in handling product-liability cases for employees, almost always on a contingency basis.
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Peter Angelos' take from that litigation alone has been estimated at $330 million.
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Peter Angelos served a brief stint on the Baltimore City Council from 1959 to 1963 and ran for mayor on the city's first interracial ticket in 1967, but lost to Thomas D'Alesandro III.
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The investigation went as far as executing a search warrant at one of his offices and federal prosecutors obtaining grand jury subpoenas, but Peter Angelos was not charged with any related crimes.
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Peter Angelos successfully lobbied the state legislature to change the law to allow the state's suit to proceed.
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Peter Angelos represented the state of Maryland in a suit against Philip Morris and suing Wyeth, the makers of part of the diet pill combination fen-phen.
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Peter Angelos went on to hold a seat on the Baltimore City Council from 1959 to 1963.
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Peter Angelos was the first Greek-American to be elected to the council.
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Peter Angelos used his influence with the small business community to call for the continuation of Maryland's contributory negligence laws while most of the United States had adopted the more equitable distributary negligence system.
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Peter Angelos donated $272,000 to the independent expenditure-only committee Draft Biden which sought to induce Vice President Joe Biden to enter the 2016 Democratic Primary for President.
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In 1993, Peter Angelos assembled a group of investors to purchase the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball from New York venture capitalist Eli Jacobs.
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Peter Angelos took over as managing partner and principal owner of the team.
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Peter Angelos became a hands-on owner willing to pay high salaries to talented free agents.
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Peter Angelos did not like that arrangement and he did not particularly care if the world found out.
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When talks between the players and the owners stalled in December 1994 and the owners voted to impose a salary cap, Peter Angelos was one of three dissenters to the arrangement.
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Peter Angelos refused to field replacement players should the strike last into the 1995 MLB season.
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Peter Angelos announced his decision about replacement players early in 1995 and was hailed as a champion of the worker.
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Peter Angelos arranged for a two-game exhibition series to be played between the Orioles and the Cuban national baseball team in 1999.
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In October 2019, John Angelos stated that neither he nor his father Peter had any plans to relocate the Orioles outside Baltimore, contrary to rumors.
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On January 30,2024, Peter Angelos agreed to sell the team to a group led by David Rubenstein that includes New York investor Michael Arougheti and Cal Ripken Jr.
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Peter Angelos died on March 23,2024, three days before the sale of the team had been expected to be finalized.
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Peter Angelos bred and raced Thoroughbred horses and in 1998 purchased the 237-acre Ross Valley Farm in Baltimore County.
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Peter Angelos named one of his horses Showalter in honor of Orioles manager Buck Showalter.
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Peter Angelos was known for various acts of charity and philanthropy, having contributed millions to civic and community institutions around Maryland.
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Peter Angelos donated millions of dollars to the Democratic Party and its candidates, and was a major supporter of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Baltimore.
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In 2013, Peter Angelos donated $15 million toward the construction of the John and Frances Peter Angelos Law Center.
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Peter Angelos was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1996.
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In 2016, Peter Angelos was inducted into The Baltimore Sun's Business and Civic Hall of Fame for his lifetime of philanthropy.
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Peter Angelos married Georgia Kousouris in 1966, and they had two children together, John and Louis.
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Peter Angelos died at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center on March 23,2024, at age 94.