 Michael
Jackson dead at 50 after cardiac arrest on June 25, 2009
Paramedics took Jackson, 50, from his $100,00 monthly rented
home located in west Los Angeles, Thursday afternoon to UCLA Medical Center,
where a team of physicians attempted to resuscitate him for more than an hour.
The famed singer was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. PT. Law enforcement officials
said the Los Angeles Police Department Robbery-Homicide Division has opened an
investigation into Jackson's death, assisted by government agencies. They
stressed there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing but that they would conduct
interviews with family members and friends.
Marlon Jackson quoted from interviews on 6/25/09, found on
web - "I talked to Frank Dileo, Michael's manager. Frank told me that
Michael last night was complaining about not feeling well. He called to tell him
he wasn't feeling well. Michael's doctor went over to see him, and Frank said,
'Marlon, from last night to this morning, I don't know what happened.' When they
got to him this morning, he wasn't breathing. They rushed him to the hospital
and couldn't bring him around."
The Los Angeles County coroner is waiting for toxicology
test results before determining what killed Jackson last month. The death
certificate has listed the cause of death as "deferred. Sources have now
reported that when Jackson collapsed, his arms were riddled with marks, and
their veins had collapsed, both characteristics found in intravenous drug users.
The revelations add to the growing speculation that prescription drugs played a
part in Jackson's death.
In life of
mysteries and tabloids, Jackson's changed color baffled public.
  Take
time to become educated on what caused this before adding to the rumors and
Lies, especially before forming your own opinions on this topic. We will share
only the facts as they are known. Jackson told Oprah Winfrey in a 1993
interview, "I'm a black American. I am proud to be a black American. I am
proud of my race, and I am proud of who I am. I have a lot of pride and dignity
of who I am. He constantly denied changing his skin color for vanity reasons and
repeatedly asserted that he had a disease called vitiligo, in
which the immune system attacks cells that produce melanin, the pigment that
determines skin color. For some patients, the discolored spots can spread
entirely across the body, leaving only freckles of the original skin color, this
is what the singer has tried to share with the public for many years. "I
have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin. It's something
I cannot help. When people make up stories that I don't like who I am, it hurts
me," Jackson told Winfrey during the '93 interview. Those familiar with the
skin condition said vitiligo is commonly misunderstood because of its rarity. It
affects approximately 1 percent of the world's population. Often inflicted
patients have to wear a glove(s) to hide early spotting on the hands, later they
have to wear sleeves and carry an umbrella, does this type of behavior sound failure?.
A powerful medication called Benoquin, also known as monobenzene, can be used to
actually remove pigment the results are permanent, it's like being an albino.
The process, though painless, is so tedious and lengthy that most people use
Benoquin only on the visible areas of their body, such as their face, neck and
arms. Side effects include irritated, dry or itchy skin. Jackson never remarked
publicly about his treatment for the rare disease. Now that you know more about
the facts perhaps you can start to better understand the world that Jackson
lived with and why he did some of those "odd behaviors".
Still the King or
Pop
 The
memorial service for Michael Jackson (7/7/09) was expected to set some high
marks for viewer ship, and it did. In the United States, the Jackson memorial
aired during the late morning and afternoon, when most people are working.
Nielsen, the television ratings service, said that 31.1 million watched. The
Jackson memorial also drew hundreds of fans, respectively, to gatherings in New
York's
Times Square, Detroit's Motown Historical Museum, London's O2 Arena and a Tokyo
Tower Records store. But it was the Internet where the memorial really hit the
heights. Global Web traffic ranged from 19 percent to 33 percent above normal
during the event, CNN.com reported 9.7 million live video streams, Yahoo News
had 5 million, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com combined for 6.4 million video
streams.
Jackson is still reigning on the music charts. According to
Nielsen SoundScan, the singer had the two best-selling albums in the United
States last week -- "Thriller" and "Number Ones" -- and 13
of the top 20 catalog albums. On iTunes, he has four of the top 10 songs
on
iTunes and four of the top 10 albums.
For the real spectacle, though, one must turn to eBay, where
there were at least 50,000 Michael Jackson-related items up for auction as of
Wednesday afternoon. Among them: 1984 Topps trading cards ($15.50), official
memorial service programs (from $2.99 to at least $10,000, some with wristbands
and tickets) and even Web domain names -- one of which,
MichaelJacksonForestLawnCemetery.com, can be yours for $650,000.
Michael Jackson by the Numbers
Look at some of the numbers behind Michael Jackson's life
and career may give you some idea of the scope of his achievements.
He recorded 16 albums, five of them with the Jackson Five and the
remaining as a soloist.
He earned 13 Grammy awards, eight of them in a single year -
1984.
Jackson spent 45 of his 50 years as a professional musician,
first appearing onstage with his brothers when he was 5 years old.
Jackson had 47 singles that appeared in the Billboard Hot 100
and 13 singles that hit No. 1 on the charts. His
"Thriller" album spent 37 weeks at the top of the charts.
He sold more than 750 million records worldwide and was the highest
earning singer of 1988-1989, with $125 million from his worldwide album
tour.
Jackson received a $1.5 million settlement from Pepsico when his hair
caught fire while filming a commercial. He donated it to the Michael Jackson
Burn Center.
He spent $47.5 million for a music catalog that included some of The
Beatles songs.
In 1987-89, his "Bad" world tour broke all kinds of records: 123
concerts before an audience of 4.4 million people, grossing him $125
million. In England, 504,000 people attended seven sold-out
shows at Wembley Stadium, another record.
9.8 million, The number of queries for the terms
"Michael" and "Jackson" across the top 25 search engines and
news and social media sites in the week ending June 27, according to Web
analytics firm Compete.
The singer's Neverland Ranch extends over 2,700 acres and was bought
in 1988 for $17 million. It is valued today at more than $100 million,
though Jackson owns just a small stake in the heavily mortgaged property now.
A long-time supporter of AIDS research, Jackson claimed to have given more
than $300 million to charity. From 1985 to 1990, he donated $500,000
to the United Negro College Fund, and in 2000, Jackson was listed in the book of
Guinness World Records for his support of 39 charities.
In 2005, Jackson was acquitted of seven counts of child sexual abuse
and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent in order to commit
that felony. The verdict followed a five-month trial. Earlier, Jackson
settled a civil lawsuit for $22 million with another family accusing him
of abusing a child.
Jacksons comeback tour featured 50 dates in London's The O2 arena
and already had generated $85 million in ticket sales.
6 million The approximate number of fans in the
Facebook group "Michael Jackson" as of 7/5/09. Less than an hour after
Jackson's death had been confirmed, more than 500 groups remembering Michael
Jackson appeared on Facebook. As of Sunday evening, the fan page R.I.P. Michael
Jackson (We Miss You) had attracted more than 3.5 million fans.
2.6 million -- The total number of downloads for Michael
Jackson and the Jackson 5 music in the week following his death, according to
Nielsen's SoundScan. The previous week's total was 48,000. Jackson became the
first act to sell more than 1 million song downloads in the first week,
according to Billboard. Gene Munster, an Apple analyst for Piper Jaffray,
estimates that in the three weeks after Jackson's death, iTunes alone will
register 14 million to 15 million downloads of Jackson songs.
1.6 million - people who applied for tickets for the public
memorial event held on 7/7/09.
sources: websites, news reports and TV viewing all
contributed to this article.
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