Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM - Analyst Report) has a long and varied history within the oil industry. The company is the largest publicly traded oil and petrochemical business in the world, operating in the majority of the world’s companies under the brands Exxon, Mobil, and Esso. Exxon Mobil is headquartered in  Irving, Texas, but is nearing completion on a 3,000,000 square feet corporate campus in the city of Spring, a suburb of Houston.

The company is without a doubt one of the most influential oil companies in the world, but what do we really know about Exxon Mobil? Here’s a look at 5 must-know facts:

1. Exxon Mobil can trace its origins back to when John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company in 1870, and its eventual disintegration into 34 different companies after the Supreme Court found Standard Oil guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1911.
 

2. Exxon used to be known as the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and Mobil used to be known as the Standard Oil Company of New York.
 

3. Exxon and Mobil merged together in 1999 in a historical and controversial deal worth nearly $80 billion.
 

4. Exxon Mobil is a part of Big Oil, which is a term coined in the 1960s that is used to describe the world’s five or six biggest publicly-owned oil and gas companies. Other members include BP Plc (BP - Analyst Report), Chevron (CVX - Analyst Report), Royal Dutch Shell , Total SA (TOT - Analyst Report), and on occasion, ConocoPhillips (COP - Analyst Report).

6. The company was responsible for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989. There was a discharge of about 11 million U.S. gallons of oil into the remote Alaskan coastline, killing an incredible amount of wildlife, but also prompting the passing of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.