29 Facts About Ted Turner

1. Ted Turner founded the Cable News Network, the first 24-hour cable news channel.

2. Additionally, in 2001, Ted Turner co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with US Senator Sam Nunn.

3. Ted Turner turned the Atlanta Braves baseball team into a nationally popular franchise and launched the charitable Goodwill Games.

4. Ted Turner helped revive interest in professional wrestling by buying World Championship Wrestling.

5. Ted Turner was the largest private landowner in the United States until John C Malone surpassed him in 2011.

6. Ted Turner created the environmental-themed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

7. Ted Turner was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence and Robert Edward Ted Turner II, a billboard magnate.

8. Ted Turner bought a 5,000-acre plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, for $2 million.

9. In 1976, Ted Turner bought the Atlanta Braves, and in 1977, he bought the Atlanta Hawks, partially to provide programming for WTCG.

10. In 1986, Ted Turner founded the Goodwill Games with the goal of easing tensions between capitalist and communist countries.

11. In 1979, Ted Turner sold his North Carolina station, WRET, to fund the transaction and established its headquarters in lower-cost, non-union Atlanta.

12. Ted Turner kept MGM's pre-May 1986 and pre-merger film and television library.

13. In 1988, Ted Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions which he renamed World Championship Wrestling which became the main competitor to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

14. Ted Turner resigned as Time Warner vice chairman in 2003 and then from the board of directors in 2006.

15. Time Warner declined to carry it on their New York City cable network in response, who in the midst of a merger, Ted Turner said would "squash Rupert Murdoch like a bug.

16. Ted Turner ran the team for one game before National League president Chub Feeney ordered him to stop running the team.

17. Ted Turner appealed to Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, and showed up to manage the Braves when they returned home.

18. Ted Turner endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 US presidential election.

19. In 2009 Ted Turner met with other business moguls to include Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, George Soros and David Rockefeller to address issues ranging from the environment to healthcare.

20. Turner Enterprises, Inc is a private American company that was founded in 1976 and manages the business interests, land holdings and investments of Ted Turner, including the oversight of Turner's 24 properties across the US and Argentina.

21. At two million acres of personal and ranch land, Ted Turner is the second-largest landowner in North America.

22. Ted Turner owned 19 ranches - 16 in the western US and three in Argentina.

23. Ted Turner appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on July 4, 1977, after being chosen to lead the 1977 America's Cup defense as skipper of the yacht Courageous.

24. Ted Turner was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993, and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.

25. Ted Turner found an audience for classics of a bygone time, along with slightly down-market content like professional wrestling.

26. Bob Hope who is co-owner and president of Hope-Beckham, an independent agency based in Atlanta that previously worked for Turner in his networks, has described that "Ted Turner was special.

27. Ted Turner was willing to start small and had the persistence and patience to make his ideas grow".

28. Ted Turner stated his dream of using communication to bring peace, to tell both sides of any story, that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

29. Ted Turner was not afraid to fail, he was more afraid of not trying and not conquering that next horizon.