Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was born to Mariano Marcos and his wife Josefa Edralin on September 11, 1917, in Sarrat, a village in the Ilocos North region of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. He is the eldest among his 3 siblings namely, Pacifico Marcos, Elizabeth Marcos-Keon and Fortuna Marcos-Barba. His parents were both teachers but his father Mariano became a qualified lawyer and also one of the leading politicians in the Philippines. But rumor say that Ferdinand's biological father was a man named Ferdinand Chua who served as his godfather.
He grew up in a privileged milieu. His parents pushed him to excel at everything not only his studies in school, but also at activities such as wrestling, boxing , hunting, survival skills and marks-manship (skill with a gun or a rifle). He studied at some of the best school in Manila where in Chua helped him to pay for his educational expenses. From 1923 to 1929, he attended the Sarrat Central School, Shamrock Elementary School in Laoag and the Ermita Elementary School in Manila. He finished high school and liberal arts course at the University of the Philippines. While still a student, he was commissioned as third lieutenant (apprentice officer) in the Philippine Constabulary Reserve after having been an ROTC battalion commander.
Julio Nalundasan, his father's political rival had been shot and killed in his house in Batac on September 21, 1935-the day after he had defeated Mariano a second time for a seat in the National Assembly. Because of this event Ferdinand was prosecuted for the murder of Nalundasan together with his father, Mariano, his brother, Pio, and his brother-in-law Quirino Lizardo. In late January 1939, they were finally denied bail] and later in the year, they were convicted. Ferdinand and Lizardo received the death penalty for premeditated murder, while Mariano and Pio were found guilty of contempt of court. The Marcos family took their appeal to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which overturned the lower court's decision on 22 October 1940, acquitting them of all charges except contempt.
Marcos studied law at the University of the Philippines, attending the prestigious College of Law. He excelled in both curricular and extra-curricular activities, becoming a valuable member of the university's swimming, boxing, and wrestling teams. He was also an accomplished and prolific orator, debater, and writer for the student newspaper. He also became a member of the University of the Philippines ROTC Unit (UP Vanguard Fraternity) where he met some of his future cabinet members and Armed Forces Chiefs of Staff. When he sat for the 1939 Bar Examinations, he received a near-perfect score of 98.8%, although some have disputed this score. The Philippine Supreme Court felt justified in altering his scoring.He graduated cum laude despite the fact that he was incarcerated while reviewing. Had he not been in jail for 27 days, he would have graduated magna cum laude] He was elected to the Pi Gamma Mu and the Phi Kappa Phi international honor societies, the latter giving him its Most Distinguished Member Award 37 years later.
At the outbreak of World War II, Ferdinand Marcos was practicing law in Manila. He soon joined the Filipino Army, and fought against the Japanese invasion as a combat intelligence officer in the 21st Infantry Division. Marcos saw action in the three-month-long Battle of Bataan, in which the Allied forces lost Luzon to the Japanese. He survived the Bataan Death March, a week-long ordeal that killed about 1/4 of Japan's American and Filipino POWs on Luzon. Marcos escaped the prison camp and joined the resistance. He later claimed to have been a guerrilla leader, but that claim has been disputed.
In December 1948 a magazine editor published four articles on Marcos's war experiences, causing Marcos's reputation to grow. In 1949, campaigning on promises to get veterans' benefits for two million Filipinos, Marcos ran as a Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives. He won with 70 percent of the vote. In less than a year he was worth a million dollars, mostly because of his American tobacco subsidies (financial assistance to grow tobacco), a huge cigarette smuggling operation, and his practice of pressuring Chinese businesses to cooperate with him. In 1954 he formally met Imelda Romualdez and got married and blessed with three children: Maria Imelda "Imee" Marcos, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos and Irene Marcos.
In 1959 he was elected to the Philippine Senate. He was also the Liberal Party's vice-president from 1954 to 1961, when he successfully managed Diosdado Macapagal's (1911–1997) run for the Philippine presidency. They had an agreement wherein after Macapagal's first term he will step-aside to give way for Ferdinand to run for Philippine presidency but Macapagal did not do it. Ferdinand joined the opposition Nationalist Party and became their candidate and easily won the position and elected as the Philippine President.
In 1969 Marcos became the first Philippine president to win a second term. However, not all Filipinos were happy with his presidency, and the month following his reelection included the most violent public demonstrations in the history of the country. Three years later, facing growing student protest and a crumbling economy, Marcos declared martial law, a state of emergency in which military authorities are given extraordinary powers to maintain order. Marcos's excuse for declaring martial law was the growing revolutionary movement of the Communist New People's Army, which opposed his government.
During the next nine years of martial law, Marcos tripled the armed forces to some two hundred thousand troops, guaranteeing his grip on government. When martial law was lifted in 1981, he kept all the power he had been granted under martial law to himself. Meanwhile the economy continued to crumble while Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos became one of the richest couples in the world. As Marcos's health began to fail and U.S. support for him lessened, opposition to Marcos grew in the Philippine middle class.
The assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. in August 1983 leads the beginning of Marcos regime to collapse. Aquino was Ferdinand's main political rival. He was shot and killed when he arrived at the Manila airport after being exiled in United States for three years. Authorities claimed that the murder was work of a single gunman and a year later, a civilian investigation brought charges against a number of soldiers and government officials, but in 1985 none of them were found guilty. Nevertheless, most Filipinos believe that Marcos was involved in Aquino's killing.
Marcos next called for a "snap election" to be held early in 1986. In that election, which was marked by violence and charges of fraud, Marcos's opponent was Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. When the Philippine National Assembly announced that Marcos was the winner, a rebellion in the Philippine military, supported by hundreds of thousands of Filipinos marching in the streets, forced Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to flee the country.
Marcos asked for U.S. aid but was given nothing more than an air force jet, which flew him and Imelda to Hawaii. He remained there until his death on September 28, 1989. The Marcoses had taken with them more than twenty-eight million cash in Philippine currency. President Aquino's administration said this was only a small part of the Marcoses' illegally gained wealth.
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