KING OF POP, MICHAEL JACKSON, PASSES AWAY AT 50

The King of Pop, Michael Joseph Jackson, who took to the stage as a child star and went on to set the world dancing to the thumping rhythms of his music for decades, died Thursday, June 25, 2009. He was 50 years old.
Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest earlier paramedics were unable to revive him. When paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back. Then the singer had been rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital by fire department paramedics who found him not breathing when they arrived at the singer's home. These paramedics performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the scene before taking him to the UCLA Medical Center hospital.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana (an industrial suburb of Chicago, Illinois) to a working-class family on August 29, 1958. The son of Joseph Walter "Joe" and Katherine Esther, he was the seventh of nine children. His siblings are Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Randy, and Janet. Joseph Jackson was a steel mill employee who often performed in an R&B band called The Falcons with his brother Luther. Jackson was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses by his devout mother.
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. At that time, Jackson was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There." After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music. He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.

Michael Jackson
Jackson 5
Michael Jackson - Video Greatest Hits - HIStory
Michael Jackson: Number Ones
Michael Jackson - History on Film

Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley (May 18, 1994 til January 18, 1996). Jackson and Presley divorced less than two years later, remaining friendly. Then..... the Jackson's death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
Jackson married dermatologist nurse Deborah Jeanne Rowe (November 15, 1996 til October 8, 1999), with whom he fathered a son, Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. (also known as "Prince", Born in 1997), and a daughter, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. (Born in 1998) The pair first met in the mid-1980s, when Jackson was diagnosed with vitiligo. She spent many years treating his illness as well as providing emotional support. They built a strong friendship, then became romantically involved. Originally there were no plans to marry, but following Rowe's first pregnancy, Jackson's mother intervened and persuaded them to do so. After the couple divorced in 1999, with Rowe giving full custody rights of the children to Jackson, they remained friends.
Jackson's third child, Prince Michael Jackson II (also known as Blanket) was born in 2002. The mother's identity has not been released by Jackson, but he has said the child was the result of artificial insemination from a surrogate mother and his own sperm cells.