1958 Jackson is born on August 26 in Gary, Indiana.

1963 He gives his first public performance aged five singing Climb Every Mountain.

1964 He joins his brothers in The Jackson Five who sign to Motown Records in 1968.

1979 Teams up with Quincey Jones to release Off The Wall, his first album with Epic and his first solo album as an adult recording artist.

1982 Thriller is released, an album which would eventually become the world's best-selling album of all-time. The smash hit yields seven top-10 singles.

1985 Jackson reportedly pays $47 million for the publishing rights to The Beatles' back catalogue.

1987 He releases Bad and buys the Neverland ranch in California.

1991 Jackson signs a huge recording contract with Sony Music and later releases Dangerous.

1993 A 13-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler claimed Jackson sexually abused him during a visit to the ranch. The same year Jackson announced he had become addicted to

painkillers and abruptly cancelled a world tour to promote Dangerous. Jackson reaches a settlement with Chandler's family in 1994, reported to be $23m.

1994 Marries Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of rock legend Elvis Presley. The pair are divorced 19 months later.

1996 Married for the second time to nurse Debbie Rowe in 1996. The couple are divorced three years later.

2001 The album Invincible — which reportedly cost $30m to produce — flops.

2002 Dangles his third child, baby Prince Michael II (whom he calls Blanket) over a fourth-floor balcony at a Berlin hotel, shocking the crowd of fans in the street below.

2003 The singer tells interviewer Martin Bashir that sharing a bed with a young boy is “a beautiful thing”. Documentary reveals that Jackson still has sleepovers with young boys and that his third baby was the child of a surrogate mother. Jackson is furious with the piece and goes on air to blast it.

2005 He is acquitted of sexually molesting 12-year-old Gavin Arvizo but his career and finances are in tatters.

2009 Tickets for 50 concerts at London's O2 Arena sell out within hours after Jackson and music promoter AEG Live announce a surprise comeback for the singer. Jackson, who had been rehearsing in Los Angeles, had been due to start the concerts on July 13. On June 25, Jackson goes into cardiac arrest and dies at the age of 50. Tributes flood in for the King of Pop.

June 29 Jackson's father Joe says he suspects “foul play somewhere” over his son's death.

Bags of pills and other medicines were seized from his rented mansion as his personal physician continued to insist that the singer had not taken an overdose.

June 30 AEG, promoters of his ill-fated concert, release pictures of his dress rehearsal two days before his death, showing Jackson looking thin but in typical singing and dancing poses as he performed with dancers.

It emerges that he had performed his set for 90 minutes until nearly midnight on June 23.

July 1 Jackson left his fortune to his three children and his mother, the singer's will reveals. The entire estate is left to a family trust, which means under US laws the exact details do not have to be made public.

July 7 Fans gather in Los Angeles ahead of a star-studded memorial service at Staples Centre, Los Angeles, the scene of Jackson's final rehearsal.