First Black President of USA

Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. The firstAfrican American to hold the office, he served as thejunior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University andHarvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and also taught constitutional law at theUniversity of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory, from a crowded field, in the March 2004Democratic primary raised his visibility. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He waselected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history.

He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the firstmajor party African American candidate for president. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republicancandidate John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he made his debut in 1964 as a member of The Jackson 5, beginning a solo career in 1971. In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African-American entertainer to amass a strongcrossover following on MTV. One of the mostcommercially successful artists of all time, his contributions to music and dance, along with a highly publicized personal life, made him a part of popular culture around the world for four decades.

His inventive music videos, including "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and Thriller, helped to transform the music video into an art form in addition to its original function as a promotional tool. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced numerous hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists. Referred to as the "King of Pop", his 1982 album Thrillerremains the best-selling album of all time, with four others—Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous(1991), and HIStory (1995)—also among the world's best selling records.

Jackson's personal life generated significant controversy. His changing appearance was noticed from the early 1980s, as his skin became paler and his facial features became thinner. He was accused in 1993 of child sexual abuse, and though no charges were brought, his health suffered when he started using painkillers to cope with the stress. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one of them born to a surrogate mother, actions that triggered more speculation about his life. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of different child molestation allegations, which provoked a further decline in his health.

A double-inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his other achievements feature multipleGuinness World Records—including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles, and the sale of over 750 million units. He was also a notablephilanthropist, donating millions of dollars to the record 39 charities he supported, and raising more through his own Heal the World Foundation. Jackson died at the age of 50 on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles, California after suffering from cardiac arrest. His memorial service was broadcast live around the world.