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For a brief moment on June 25, 2009, the entire world came to a standstill. Word had just broken about the death of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop who had moonwalked his way into incomparable fame. He was just 50 years old when he perished. So how did Michael Jackson die?Michael Jacksons death on that summer day marked the end of his sometimes strange and often dazzling life. After rising to fame with his siblings in their family band The Jackson 5, Jackson broke out on his own. Hit songs like Billie Jean, Thriller, and Beat It, as well as Jacksons iconic dance moves, made him an international phenomenon.But there was a dark undercurrent to his fame. The world watched as Jacksons naturally brown skin faded to paper white, his unusual behavior became a fixture in the tabloids, and the singer faced accusations that hed molested young boys. Jackson was dogged by legal troubles in the 1990s and 2000s, and took a step back from the spotlight in 2005.However, by 2009 the year that Michael Jackson died the pop star was preparing to go back on tour when the world learned of his death. Rumors immediately swirled about the cause, though it took months to reveal that Jackson had died in his Los Angeles home after taking a fatal combination of drugs prescribed to him by his personal doctor.In the years since Michael Jacksons death, the world has struggled to define his legacy. He was one of the worlds most successful and iconic entertainers, but a damaging documentary in 2019 made the case yet again that he sexually abused young boys and got away with it.The Skyrocketing Success Of Michael JacksonMichael Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana, to a large and musical family. When he was five years old, he joined four of his older siblings in their band The Jackson 5 and eventually became the groups frontman.Under the unrelenting and frequently violent eye of their father, Joe, the boys in The Jackson 5 became a success in the early 1970s with hit songs like I Want You Back and Ill Be There. PBH Images/Alamy Stock PhotoA publicity shot of The Jackson 5 from 1972.However, Michael Jackson also started to make a name for himself on his own.In 1972, he released his first solo album for Motown, Got to Be There, and showed off his acting chops in the cult classic film The Wiz (1978). Then, in 1979, Jackson released his first solo album for Epic Records, Off the Wall, which became the best-selling album of the entire year.But everything really changed in the 1980s. Then, Jackson released his album Thriller (1982) and his now-iconic Thriller music video the next year. The album became the best-selling album in world history, eventually selling 70 million copies, and the music video arguably heralded the MTV era. Jacksons incredible dance moves, including the moonwalk, also led Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn to deem Jackson the King of Pop.As Jackson became a bigger star, however, troubling rumors about him began to bubble to the surface. Some concerned his ever-changing appearance, especially his skin, which had started to lighten before the worlds eyes. And some were far more serious. In the 1990s, Michael Jackson started facing allegations that he had molested young boys. The Downward Spiral Of The King Of PopBy the 1990s, Michael Jacksons appearance had dramatically changed from his early days of fame. His skin had become noticeably whiter, almost translucent. Jackson addressed the rumors about his skin in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, telling her he had a skin disorder called vitiligo.YouTubeMichael Jackson speaking to Oprah Winfrey in 1993.It is something I cannot help, Jackson said during the interview, claiming that he only used makeup to fix blotchiness caused by vitiligo and never bleached his skin. When people make up stories that I dont want to be who I am, it hurts me. Its a problem for me. I cant control it. But what about all the millions of people who sit in the sun to become darker, to become other than what they are. Nobody says nothing about that.But that same year, Jackson faced far more damaging allegations than skin bleaching when it emerged that the LAPD was investigating accusations that he molested a 13-year-old boy.Jackson was known to spend much of his free time with young children, which sometimes included sleepovers. The allegations led some to believe that there was something far more nefarious to these get-togethers. When the boys family filed a civil suit against him, Jackson settled out of court, allegedly for over $20 million. The charges were destructive to both Jacksons image and Jackson himself, and Rolling Stone reports that the pop stars fatal reliance on medication began around this time. Jackson turned to drugs as a means of escape and to cope with pain from past surgeries and injuries, including severe burns that he suffered in 1984 while filming a commercial for Pepsi. Yvonne Hemsey/Getty ImagesMichael Jackson broadcasting from his Neverland Ranch home in 1993, denying allegations of child molestation.As time went on, Jackson appeared in the news more often for his scandals than his music. He married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis, in 1994, only to divorce her 18 months later. In 1996, he married a nurse from his dermatologists office named Debbie Rowe, with whom he welcomed two children (conceived by artificial insemination) and divorced her in 1999. Meanwhile, child molestation allegations against Jackson emerged yet again. In 2003, Jackson was arrested on charges of molesting a different 13-year-old boy. In 2005, his case went to trial. Though Jackson was eventually acquitted of the charges, the damage to his reputation was severe. After 2005, the singer largely retreated from the public eye. Still, troubling stories about Jackson continued to emerge, like that he owed a Beverly Hills pharmacy more than $100,000 in prescription drug debts.Jackson more or less avoided the spotlight until 2009, when he announced a series of 50 concerts that he would perform in London later that year. He described the tour as a final curtain call but his actual curtain call would come before the tour began, when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009. How Did Michael Jackson Die? His Final HoursAs Michael Jackson prepared for his tour, some close to him started to notice disturbing changes. His makeup artist, Karen Faye, later recalled that Jackson was not the man I knew and that he was acting like a person I didnt recognize. Show director Kenny Ortega who, like Faye, was very familiar with Jacksons usual work habits, similarly testified that the singer seemed lost, cold, afraid and exhibited paranoid and anxious behavior. Though such concerns were brought to Jacksons personal doctor, Conrad Murray, Murray allegedly insisted that Jackson was physically and emotionally capable of handling all his responsibility as a performer.WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoConrad Murray during his involuntary manslaughter trial in 2011.On June 24, 2009, Michael Jackson attended rehearsal as normal. The tour was set to begin the next month at Londons O2 Arena, and Jackson rehearsed until about midnight. After that was done, he hugged his dancers, thanked his crew, and returned to his Los Angeles home. There, Jackson who had long suffered from insomnia and was having an especially difficult time sleeping in recent months told Murray that he needed rest. In the early hours of June 25, 2009, Murray gave Jackson a series of drugs that were meant to help him sleep, including the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, the sedative midazolam, and Valium. Murray later told investigators that he initially resisted Jacksons requests for propofol, a powerful anesthetic that Murray had given the singer before (even though its not meant to be used outside of hospital or clinic settings). As the morning hours stretched on, however, Murray relented. Mere moments later, Murray realized that Jackson was not breathing. He said he made multiple attempts to resuscitate him, as did first responders who arrived at the home. But it was too late Michael Jackson died after suffering cardiac arrest brought on by acute propofol intoxication.The world awoke to the shocking news that the King of Pop had perished. As the Los Angeles Times grimly put it, Jackson had spent much of his life as one of the most famous people on the planet, and to many, his untimely death felt both unthinkable and, oddly, inevitable.The Aftermath Of Michael Jacksons DeathTaty2007/Wikimedia CommonsGifts left by fans at Michael Jacksons Hollywood Walk of Fame star on the day of his death.Eight months after Michael Jacksons death, investigators charged Conrad Murray with involuntary manslaughter. In 2011, Murray was found guilty and sent to prison where he served two years of a four-year jail sentence. Since then, Michael Jackson has held an uncomfortable place in American culture. He was the King of Pop, an iconic singer who revolutionized dance moves and music videos. But child molestation accusations against the singer have only grown louder since Michael Jacksons death. Between 2013 and 2014, two men named Wade Robson and James Safechuck sued the Jackson estate and Jacksons companies on the grounds that the singer had abused them as boys.Though a judge initially rejected their suits, the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland (2019) brought their story to a wider audience. Both men offered detailed descriptions of the alleged abuse they suffered at Jacksons hands, which they claimed took place at a variety of locations, including Jacksons Neverland Ranch.In 2023, a California appeals court ruled that Robson and Safechuck could resume their lawsuits and move them forward to jury trials.All of this makes Michael Jackson difficult to judge. A once-in-a-lifetime artist, Jackson will always be remembered for songs like Billie Jean and Thriller, for his famous music videos, and for his even more iconic dance moves. But the disturbing allegations against Jackson though he has never been found guilty also cast a dark shadow on his legacy. After reading about how Michael Jackson died, go inside the tragic final days of Whitney Houston. Or, learn about the death of Freddie Mercury.The post Michael Jacksons Death And The Fatal Overdose That Caused It appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The Iron Maiden is perhaps one of the most recognizable medieval torture devices of all time, thanks in large part to its prominence in films, television shows, and cartoons like Scooby-Doo. As far as torture devices go, though, the Iron Maiden is really quite simple.It is a human-shaped box, decorated on the inside with incredibly sharp spikes that would, presumably, impale through the victim on either side when the box was shut. But the spikes were not long enough to kill a person outright rather, they were short and placed in such a way that the victim would die a slow and agonizing death, bleeding out over time.The Print Collector/Getty ImagesA woodcut print of an Iron Maiden being used in a torture room.At least, that was the idea. Except, the Iron Maiden wasnt a medieval torture device at all.The first written reference to the Iron Maiden didnt appear until the late 1700s, long after the Middle Ages had come to an end. And while torture most certainly existed during the Middle Ages, many historians have argued that medieval torture was much simpler than later accounts would imply.Many Medieval Torture Devices Werent Actually MedievalTheres a widely-held notion that the Middle Ages were an especially uncivilized time in history.The collapse of the Holy Roman Empire led to a sharp decline in technical capacity and material culture as the infrastructure that the Romans had installed came to a near-total collapse. Suddenly, Europeans could no longer rely on the mass production of Roman factories and on Romes complex commerce systems.Instead, everything became smaller in scale. Pottery was rough and homemade. Luxury goods were no longer traded over long distances. This is why the Middle Ages were often referred to as the Dark Ages by certain scholars it seemed as if everything was in a state of decline.Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMedieval farmers working the fields and sowing seeds.Basically, starting in the 14th century, some Italian scholars viewed the history of the world in three distinct phases: the Classical Age, when the ancient Greeks and Romans were at the height of wisdom and power; the Renaissance, the age in which these scholars lived and things were generally on the up and up; and everything in between, the Middle Ages.As British historian Janet Nelson explained in History Workshop Journal, these writers believed theirs was a time of reborn classical culture, they rescued Greek from near-oblivion, removed errors from Latin, cleared fog from philosophy, crassness from theology, crudeness from art.Therefore, all of those pesky years between the Classical Age and the Renaissance were deemed an uncivilized, barbaric time in history and so many torture devices that were used much later or much earlier became associated with the Middle Ages.The First Mention Of The Iron MaidenAs Medieval Warfare magazine editor Peter Konieczny wrote for medievalists.net, many medieval torture devices werent medieval at all, including the Iron Maiden.The first mention of the Iron Maiden actually came from 18th-century writer Johann Philipp Siebenkees, who described the device in a guidebook to the city of Nuremberg.In it, he wrote of a 1515 execution in Nuremberg in which a criminal was allegedly placed in a device reminiscent of a sarcophagus lined on the inside with sharp spikes.The man was shoved into the device and executed slowly, Siebenkees wrote, so that the very sharp points penetrated his arms, and his legs in several places, and his belly and chest, and his bladder and the root of his member, and his eyes, and his shoulder, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him, and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died.Roger Viollet via Getty ImagesThe Iron Maiden of Nuremberg.But many scholars believe Siebenkees may have invented this story, and that the Iron Maiden didnt exist before the 18th century at all.The Iron Maiden Myth SpreadsNot long after Siebenkees published his account, Iron Maidens began to appear in museums across Europe and the United States, pieced together using various medieval artifacts and scraps and put on display for those willing to pay a fee. One even appeared in the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago.Perhaps the most famous of these devices was the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg, which wasnt constructed until the early 19th century and was later destroyed in a bombing by Allied forces in 1944. The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was eventually deemed a fake, yet some have claimed that it was used as early as the 12th century. In one horrifying account, an Iron Maiden was found at the site of the Iraqi National Olympic committee in Baghdad in 2003. TIME reported that at one time Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein, headed both the Olympic committee and the countrys soccer federation, and its believed he may have used the Iron Maiden to torture athletes who didnt perform well.Konieczny identified several other torture devices that have incorrectly been attributed to the Middle Ages. The Brazen Bull, for example, is often believed to be a medieval invention, yet its creation can reportedly be traced to the 6th century B.C.E. The Pear of Anguish was likewise associated with the Middle Ages, but records of devices like it dont appear until the mid-19th century. So, too, did The Rack become synonymous with medieval times, though it was much more common in antiquity, and only one more recent example of it can be traced to the Tower of London in 1447. In reality, torture in the Middle Ages involved much less complex methods.What Was Torture In The Middle Ages Really Like?Most of these myths about torture in the Middle Ages were spread by people living in the 18th and 19th centuries, Konieczny explained.You get that idea that people were much more savage in the Middle Ages, because they want to see themselves as less savage, Konieczny told Live Science. Its so much easier to pick on people who have been dead for 500 years.In essence, Konieczny believes that people in the 1700s and 1800s exaggerated a bit when it came to their accounts of the Middle Ages. In the years since, that exaggeration has compounded, and now many of these 18th-century myths are viewed as fact.For example, the argument has been made in recent years that the flail, a ball-and-chain weapon commonly associated with the medieval era, wasnt used during the Middle Ages at all, despite what most people think.In fact, the flail was only historically featured in epic artworks depicting fantastical battles, but it never showed up in any medieval armorys catalog. The flail, much like the Iron Maiden, seems to have become linked to a specific time in history due to the influence of storytelling by later historians.Rischgitz/Getty ImagesA 15th-century tribunal with an accused man being tortured in front of the members of the court in order to extract a confession.Thats not to say torture didnt exist during that time, however.There was an idea in the Middle Ages that you were really honest when you were under a lot of punishment, under a lot of strain, Konieczny said. That the truth comes out when it starts to hurt.There were much simpler ways of extracting this information, though ones that didnt involve a litany of elaborate devices. The more common torture was to just kind of bind people up with rope, Konieczny said. So, there you have it. There have certainly been execution methods used in the past that resembled the Iron Maiden the idea of a box with spikes inside isnt particularly revolutionary but the Iron Maiden itself seems to be more fiction than fact.After reading about the Iron Maiden, learn all about The Rack, the torture device that stretched out its victims limbs until they dislocated. Then, read about the infamous Spanish Donkey.The post The Surprising Story Of The Iron Maiden, Said To Be The Most Brutal Torture Device Of The Medieval Era appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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