THE DEATH OF Michael Jackson last week diverted media attention from an earlier big story, the announcement that Jon and Kate Gosselin were divorcing. This big news broke on their TLC channel “reality” TV show, Jon and Kate plus 8.

I watched that show for the first time in a June 23 rerun of the announcement, and was thus introduced to the sextuplets that were born in Hershey, Pa. five years ago, with more than 50 doctors, nurses and other specialists in attendance. Both the sextuplets and the Gosselin’s older children, twins, were conceived through the most modern methods of treating infertility.

What a contrast to the first multiple birth that made worldwide news, in 1934. Oliva Dionne, a poor farmer in northern Ontario, and his wife Elzire already had five children when their family doctor, Allan Defoe, and two midwives delivered the five identical girls.

MULTIPLE births had not been expected, and the doctor didn’t think the babies would live. (All weighed less the two pounds.)

According to Wikipedia, the babies were kept in an ordinary wicker basket borrowed from the neighbors with heated blankets. They were soon brought into the kitchen and set by the open door of the stove to keep warm.

But after four months they were doing well and the Ontario government had them made wards of the King of England for the next nine years. They were taken away from their parents and placed in a hospital-nursery compound under the supervision of Dr. Dafoe, who became a celebrity.

They were put on display for as many as 6,000 people a day who came to watch them play behind a one-way screen.

I WAS ONE of those. In August of 1939 my family drove to New York City to attend the World’s Fair, whose “World of Tomorrow” truly gave us a glimpse of the post-World War II era of television, freeways and other wonders.

In our sturdy 1939 Oldsmobile, which saw us through WWII, we went on from there to New Hamburg, Ontario, my dad’s home town, to visit relatives. The quintuplets, by then, were a Canadian tourist attraction, surpassing Niagara Falls.

So we made the drive of more than 100 miles through Ontario’s North Woods to see the quintuplets, a trek we shared with such luminaries as Hollywood’s Clark Gable, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Mae West and James Stewart.

The girls’ father fought a 9-year battle to regain custody of the quints, and they were returned to their parents in 1943.

BY THAT TIME, three million people had visited the compound and under Dr. Dafoe’s supervision, the quints had endorsed hundreds of products. The family made money by running a souvenir shop and concession store at “Quintland.”

Oliva Dionne sold stones from his farm at 50 cents each that were supposed to have magic fertility power.

Jon & Kate Plus 8 is in its fifth season, the last three on TLC, where it is one of the highest-rated programs. The mere fact that the parents are divorciing will not necessarily cancel the program. Many critics decry the possible ill effects for the children. Perhaps the Dionne quints’ experience is relevant.

IN 1997, shortly after the world’s first surviving septuplets were born in Iowa, the three surviving Dionne Quintuplets wrote a letter to their parents, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey.

Annette, Cecile and Yvonne Dionne cautioned, “multiple births should not be confused with entertainment, nor should they be an opportunity to sell products.” The letter went on to say that the quints’ lives had been ruined by exploitation they had suffered at the hands of the Ontario government.

It surprised me to learn that even though they couldn’t see the tourists, they could hear them. And they didn’t like it. According to the letter as published in Time magazine, the sisters said they hoped the McCaugheys’ four boys and three girls would be treated with more respect than they had received.

Earlier, in their 1965 book, We Were Five, the Dionnes had written, “There was so much more money than love in our existence. It took a long time to realize what it did to us all.”

AND THEN there is that other story — the Octomom, 33-year-old Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight babies in January to add to the six she already had, ages two through seven. She has already become famous and, though she denies it, apparently expects the world to make her rich as well.

All that is known for sure is that this unemployed woman with no apparent source of income has been so convinced that motherhood is her destiny that she has found sperm donors — but not fathers — to create 14 children.

No doubt the world will stay tuned.

sgreene@tatertv.com