Prologue: Pieces of History

Richard Nixon meeting with Elvis Presley (NLRN-WHPO-5364-22)

For those keeping tabs on the King, the 33rd anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death came and went yesterday. As we here at Pieces of History are always interested in sharing tidbits from the Archives that may otherwise go unnoticed, we delved into our Archival Research Catalog to see what we could see. And what we saw was, well, weird.

Yes, there were the images of Nixon meeting Elvis in one of history’s most peculiar meet-ups, and papers relating to Elvis’ time in the Army (you can see all of this by searching Elvis in ARC), but what really caught our eye were the videos obscurely related to the King. We’ve selected two clips for your viewing pleasure, not so much because of what they have to do with Elvis, but because part of the pleasure in searching through the National Archives is all the randomness you will find. So, onto videos about robot-loving-seals, UFOs, and, of course, Elvis.