Short answers, pulled from the story.
Standard Oil was founded by John D. Rockefeller, who incorporated the company in Ohio in 1870 with $1 million in capital. Its origins trace to a partnership formed in 1863 with William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, Samuel Andrews, Stephen V. Harkness, and Oliver Burr Jennings.
On the 15th of May 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Standard Oil an unreasonable monopoly under Section II of the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered it split into 39 independent companies. The court found that Standard had used secret railroad rebates, pipeline control abuses, local price-cutting, and bogus independent companies to restrain trade and suppress competition.
The Standard Oil Trust was formed on the 2nd of January 1882, when 37 stockholders transferred their shares in trust to nine trustees, combining companies across dozens of states under a single holding agency. The original trust was valued at $70 million. The structure was designed to circumvent state laws that restricted out-of-state corporate ownership.
Ida M. Tarbell was an American journalist whose father's oil business had been destroyed by Rockefeller's practices. She published a 19-part investigation in McClure's magazine between November 1902 and October 1904, then released it as the book The History of the Standard Oil Company. Her reporting fueled public and political pressure that contributed directly to the antitrust suit.
The 39 successor companies include what became ExxonMobil (from Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York), Chevron (from Standard Oil of California), and BP, which later acquired Standard Oil of Ohio and Standard Oil of Indiana (known as Amoco). Marathon Oil and ConocoPhillips also trace lineage to Standard Oil successors.
Standard Oil entered China in the 1890s, marketing kerosene to a population of close to 400 million as lamp fuel under the brand name Mei Foo. The company gave away or sold cheaply tin lamps to encourage farmers to switch from vegetable oil, and China became Standard's largest Asian market. Standard also operated a river fleet on the Yangtze, including tankers Mei Ping, Mei Hsia, and Mei An, all three of which were destroyed in the 1937 USS Panay incident.