The HIStory World Tour began in Prague on September 7, 1996 and ended in Durban, South Africa on October 15, 1997. Across 13 months it played 82 concerts in 58 cities on five continents to an estimated 4.5 million fans, making it one of the highest-attended concert tours in pop history.
The show's emotional centerpiece was Earth Song, the third single from the HIStory album. Released in November 1995, the song had debuted at number one in the United Kingdom and stayed there for six weeks, becoming Michael's best-selling single in Britain. The live version on the HIStory tour stretched to nearly nine minutes and ended with Michael standing on an elevated mechanical bridge that lifted him roughly 20 meters above the stage while the band played the final crescendo.
On the night of June 27, 1997, in Munich's Olympic Stadium, the bridge collapsed during the song's final lift. Michael fell roughly 60 feet onto the stage below, partially cushioned by the bridge's structural failure breaking his fall in stages. Concertgoers who were closest later said he barely flinched. He climbed up, picked the song back up where it had stopped, and finished the show. He was taken to hospital after the encore.
The footage of the collapse circulated for years before being officially released. Doctors who examined him said he should not have been able to finish the performance. Michael told a friend afterwards that he had been so focused on the song's lyrics — about deforestation, war, and the planet — that he hadn't registered the pain until backstage.
Looking back, the HIStory tour is the moment the world began to see how much Michael was willing to spend physically on his audience. The shows ran more than two hours. He performed nine to 12 songs at full choreographic intensity, in costumes that often weighed close to ten kilograms, in stadiums that frequently exceeded 60,000 people. He was 38 years old.