Thousands are expected to swamp Los Angeles, California, to mourn him Tuesday at the Staples Center, and the accompanying media crush will be enormous.

The tribute to the King of Pop at Harlem's Apollo Theater earlier this week drew coverage from all over the world, along with a public turnout in the thousands.

Given the feverish interest in all things Jackson, the Los Angeles memorial could be one of the most-viewed events of all time.

"This will obviously be a huge media event, and with Web streams of the funeral, it may be impossible to say for sure how many people watched once all is said and done, because there's still no comprehensive way to measure Web viewing," said Toni Fitzgerald, of Media Life, in an e-mail interview.

A handful of events have earned the kind of worldwide coverage to put the world on pause, if only for a moment. The 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy "had the nation locked in a trance for two or three days," recalled TV critic Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com.

The world audience for the Apollo 11 moon landing has been estimated in the hundreds of millions. The BBC estimated 2.5 billion people watched the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana.