[8] Billiton Maatschappij was founded 29 September 1860, when its articles of association were approved by a meeting of shareholders in the Groot Keizershof hotel in The Hague, Netherlands.

[9][10][11] Two months later, the company acquired mineral rights to the Billiton (Belitung) and Bangka Islands in the Netherlands Indies archipelago off the eastern coast of Sumatra.

[24] Historian Christopher Jay notes: The resulting 35,605 ounces of silver raised a lot of interest when exhibited at the City of Melbourne Bank in Collins Street.

Some sceptics asserted the promoters were merely using silver from somewhere else, to ramp up the shares.... Another shareholder, the dominating W. R. Wilson had had to lend William Jamieson, General Manager, a new suit so he could take the first prospectus, printed at Silverton near Broken Hill on 20 June 1885, to Adelaide to start the float process.

As costs mounted during the ensuing months of fruitless search, three of the original seven (now remembered as the Syndicate of Seven) sold their shares, so that, on the eve of the company's great success, there were nine shareholders, including Rasp, McCulloch, Philip Charly (aka Charley), David James, James Poole (five of the original syndicate of seven, which had previously included George Urquhart and G.A.M.

[29] Strongly encouraged by the New South Wales Minister for Public Works, Arthur Hill Griffith,[30][31] in 1915, the company ventured into steel manufacturing, with its operations based primarily at the Newcastle Steelworks.

[32] The discovery of Iron Knob and Iron Monarch near the western shore of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia, combined with the refinement, by BHP metallurgists A. D. Carmichael and Leslie Bradford, of the froth flotation technique for separating zinc sulphides from the accompanying gangue and subsequent conversion (Carmichael–Bradford process) to oxides of the metal, allowed BHP to economically extract valuable metals from the heaps of tailings up to 40 feet (12 m) high at the mine site.

[35] Newcastle operations were closed in 1999,[36] and a 70-ton commemorative sculpture, The Muster Point, was installed on Industrial Drive, in the suburb of Mayfield, New South Wales.

[51][52] On 14 May 2008, BHP Billiton shares rose to a record high of A$48.90 following speculation that Chinese mining firm Chinalco was considering purchasing a large stake.

[53] As global nickel prices fell, on 25 November 2008, Billiton announced that it would drop its A$66 billion takeover of rival Rio Tinto Group, stating that the "risks to shareholder value" would "increase" to "an unacceptable level" due to the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

[60] This acquisition marked a major strategic move by BHP outside hard commodities and commenced the diversification of its business away from resources with high exposure to carbon price risk, like coal, petroleum and iron ore.

[64] On 22 February 2011, BHP Billiton announced that it had paid $4.75 billion in cash to Chesapeake Energy for its Fayetteville shale assets, which include 487,000 acres (1,970 km2) of mineral rights leases and 420 miles (680 km) of pipeline located in north central Arkansas.

[65] On 14 July 2011, BHP Billiton announced that it would acquire Petrohawk Energy of the United States for approximately $12.1 billion in cash, considerably expanding its shale natural gas resources[66] in an offer of $US38.75 per share.

[69] On 19 August 2014, BHP Billiton announced it would create an independent global metals and mining company based on a selection of its aluminium, coal, manganese, nickel, and silver assets.

[72][73] BHP Billiton agreed to pay a fine of $25 million to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 in connection with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act related to its "hospitality program" at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

[79] In April 2017 activist hedge fund manager Elliott Advisors proposed a plan for BHP Billiton to spin off its American petroleum assets and significantly restructure the business, including the scrapping of its dual Sydney-London listing, suggesting shares be offered only in the United Kingdom, while leaving its headquarters and tax residences in Australia where shares would trade as depository instruments.

[86] On 29 September 2018, BHP completed the sale of its Fayetteville Onshore US gas assets to a wholly owned subsidiary of Merit Energy Company.

BHP and Lundin Mining also agreed to form a 50/50 joint venture to hold the Filo del Sol (FDS) and Josemaria projects.

[115] BHP is listed as one of the 90 fossil fuel extraction and marketing companies responsible for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial age.

In 1999, BHP reported that 90 million tons of mine waste was annually discharged into the river for more than ten years and destroyed downstream villages, agriculture and fisheries.

"[127] As of 2006[update], mine operators continued to discharge 80 million tons of tailings, overburden, and mine-induced erosion into the river system each year.

[128] In the 1990s the communities of the lower Fly Region, including the Yonggom people,[129] sued BHP and received US$28.6 million in an out-of-court settlement, which was the culmination of an enormous public-relations campaign against the company by environmental groups.

[130] In 2015, the company was involved in the Bento Rodrigues tailings dam collapse, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

[112][113][131] On 5 November 2015, an iron ore mine tailings dam near Mariana, south-eastern Brazil, owned and operated by Samarco, a subsidiary of BHP and Vale, suffered a catastrophic failure, devastating the nearby town of Bento Rodrigues with the mudflow, killing 19 people, injuring more than 50 and causing enormous ecological damage,[132] and threatening life along the Rio Doce and the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the Rio Doce.

[134] An investigation into the disaster commissioned by BHP, Vale and Samarco found the collapse was due to a variety of construction and design flaws.

[135] In June 2018, Samarco, Vale and BHP signed an agreement for the Brazilian government to drop a $7 billion civil lawsuit against the mining companies and allow two years for the companies to address the greater US$55 billion civil lawsuit brought by Brazil's federal prosecutors seeking social, environmental and economic compensation.

Due to which the water table has dropped significantly, making land-based livelihoods less viable for people of the community, many of whom have been forced to relocate to urban areas.

In January 2021, the Supreme Court of Chile validated the objections of local indigenous tribes about BHP's water usage and impacts on wetland areas.

The deceased were: BHP Billiton Angola Chief Operating Officer David Hopgood (Australian), Angola Technical Services Operations Manager Kevin Ayre (British), Wild Dog Helicopters pilot Kottie Breedt (South African), Guy Sommerfield (British) of MMC and Louwrens Prinsloo (Namibian) of Prinsloo Drilling.

The helicopter crashed approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) from the Alto Cuilo diamond exploration camp in Lunda Norte, northeastern Angola.