Robert Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945, on his grandfather Omeriah Malcolm’s farm in the rural interior of the island of Jamaica at Nine Mile, Rhoden Hall, St. Ann Parish. His mother was an eighteen-year-old black Jamaican named Cedella Malcolm. His father was Captain Norval Sinclair Marley, a white British Army member in his early sixties. Bob spent most of the early part of his life in poverty and all of it without a father present. Marley died on May 11, 1981, at the age of thirty-six, from cancer in his stomach, lungs, and brain. Since 1991, ten years after his death, over 21 million Bob Marley records have been sold. Marley was also known for his belief in Rastafarianism, where Haile Selassie I is regarded by Rastafarians as the God of the Black race.