1957: Born in the Saudi city of Riyadh, one of some 54 children born to

Mohammad bin Laden, a construction magnate. His mother is of Syrian origin.

Bin Laden's exact date of birth unknown.

1969: Mohammed bin Laden dies in a helicopter crash. Osama, then aged around
11, is believed to have inherited $80 million. The boy later goes on to study civil
engineering in the city of Jeddah.

1973: Forms links with extremist Muslim groups and builds up his fortune by
managing the family construction business.

December 26, 1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan, an event that will
precipitate a bloody 10-year war and radicalise a generation of Islamic
extremists, including bin Laden.

1984: Bin Laden travels to Afghanistan, responding to calls for a jihad, or holy
Islamic war, against the Soviet occupying force. There, he finances and takes
command of a force of some 20,000 Islamic fighters recruited from around the
world.

1988: Believed to be the year in which bin Laden founded his group Al-Qaeda
(the base).

1989: The Soviet Union withdraws its forces from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda goes on
to become a worldwide network of Islamic extremist groups with members in
between 35 and 60 countries and headquarters in Afghanistan.

1991: A US-led alliance launches a war to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which
Iraq had occupied the previous year. Bin Laden declares jihad against the United
States because it has based forces in his native Saudi Arabia, where Islam's two
most holy places are located.

1992: Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia, but his support for violent Islamic
extremist groups in Egypt and Algeria leads his home country to withdraw his
passport. Expelled from Saudi Arabia, he takes up residence in Sudan.

February 26, 1993: An explosion in the basement of the World Trade Center in
New York kills six people and injures around 1,000. The attack is later blamed on
Al-Qaeda.

1994: The Saudi authorities strip bin Laden of his nationality after he issues
fatwas, or Islamic religious pronouncements, denouncing both the royal family
and the United States.

November 13, 1995: A car bomb explodes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in front of a
building of of the Saudi national guard where US military advisors work. Five US
soldiers and two Indian nationals are killed and more than 60 people are injured.
The attack is attributed to bin Laden's group, which does not claim responsibility
but makes clear its support for those responsible.

June 25, 1996: A truck loaded with explosives destroys a building at the US
military base of Khobar in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen US nationals are killed and 386
are wounded.

1996: Sudan, facing pressure from the United Nations, tells bin Laden to leave.
Rumours say he moves on to Yemen, then secretly to Saudi Arabia, but he
ultimately resurfaces in Afghanistan, where he again issues fatwas against US
citizens.

September 1996: The Taliban, a Pakistani-backed Islamic movement whose

name means "religious students", capture the Afghan capital Kabul. Over the
following six years they consolidate their hold over some 90 percent of the
country.

August 7, 1998: Near-simultaneous bomb attacks against US embassies in

Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam kill 224 people, most of them Africans, and injure
thousands.

August 20, 1998: In retaliation for the embassy attacks, the US strikes bin Laden
training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan with cruise missiles, killing at least 20
people. Bin Laden is not present.

November 1998: Bin Laden is indicted by a New York court in connection with
the embassy attacks in Tanzania and Kenya, and charged in absentia with
murder and conspiracy to kill US citizens outside the United States.

1999: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation places bin Laden on its "10 most
wanted" list.

October 12, 2000: A suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden
in Yemen kills 17 US Marines and wounds 38. The attack is attributed to Al-
Qaeda.

2001

September 9: Ahmad Shah Masood, the head of the Afghan opposition Northern
Alliance, is killed in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan.

September 11: Two hijacked US airliners crash into the twin towers of the World
Trade Center in New York, which subsequently collapse. A third hijacked plane
crashes into the Pentagon outside Washington and a fourth in rural Pennsylvania.
The attacks kill around 3,000 people.
September 13: Bin Laden is named principal suspect for coordinating the attacks
in New York and Washington.

September 23: Washington offers a 25-million-dollar reward for any information

leading to the arrest of bin Laden.

October 7: US-led strikes on Afghanistan begin, aimed at forcing the ruling

Taliban to hand over bin Laden. Bin Laden vows no peace for the US and its
citizens in a message broadcast via the Al-Jazeera television network. While not
explicitly claiming responsibility for the attacks, he praises those who carried
them out.

November 3: In a second message broadcast on Al-Jazeera, bin Laden appeals to

all Muslims to defend their religion and Afghan citizens against the US "crusade",
calls then UN secretary general Kofi Annan a "criminal" and leaders of UN Arab
members "infidels".

November 10: The Pakistani newspaper Dawn publishes an exclusive interview

with bin Laden in which he claims to have chemical and nuclear weapons. "I wish
to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us then we
may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons," he says.

November 13: Afghan opposition forces enter the capital Kabul, marking the
beginning of the end for the Taliban regime that sheltered bin Laden.

December 7: Afghan opposition forces enter the southern city of Kandahar, the
Taliban's birthplace and only remaining stronghold. Bin laden is believed to have
fled to the remote Tora Bora mountains in the east. Despite a massive US-led
operation to track him down, the trail goes dead.

December 13: Washington releases a video recording in which bin Laden claims
responsibility for the September 11 attacks and says they were beyond his
expectations.

December 16: Afghan commander Haji Mohammad Zaman announces that 2,000
Al-Qaeda fighters were on the run after being flushed out of a network of caves
and tunnels in Tora Bora, but that the world's most wanted man had managed to
escape.

2002

From early 2002 there are a series of claims, denials and reports on bin Laden's
whereabouts. He is variously reported to be in Afghanistan, Iran Pakistan -- or
dead.

2003
February 6: Then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says bin Laden is
probably alive and hiding in Afghanistan, but claims Al-Qaeda is no longer an
effective terrorist organisation.

March 1: Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, believed to be Al-Qaeda's number-three and

the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is arrested in Pakistan and
handed over to US authorities.

March 20: US-led war against Iraq starts.

2003-2010

Bin Laden releases a series of statements including comments on the conflicts in

Iraq and Afghanistan, threats of more attacks, and offers of a truce with the
United States.

2004

- April 15: "I present a reconciliation initiative... to stop operations against all
(European) countries if they promise not to be aggressive towards Muslims." (Al-
Arabiya audiotape)

2008

- March 20: Warns Europe of a "reckoning" after controversial cartoons of

Prophet Mohammed published. (Internet audiotape)

2009

June 3: Scorns Obama's Middle East charm offensive and accuses him of
"antagonising Muslims."

2010:

Jan 24: Claims botched Christmas Day bombing of US airliner and threatens more
strikes on US targets. (Al-Jazeera audiotape).

Jan 29: Blames industrial nations for climate change and the United States for
refusing to sign up to the Kyoto protocol, while urging a US dollar boycott. (Al-
Jazeera audiotape).

2011

May 1: Bin Laden is killed in a firefight with covert US forces in the Pakistani city
of Abbottabad, northeast of the capital Islamabad, Obama announces in a
televised address.
-- A US official says an adult son of the Al-Qaeda chief was also killed in the
operation, which lasted less than 40 minutes.