Prologue: Pieces of History

Do sideburns set your heart aflutter? It’s been 35 years since Elvis Presley died, but judging from the media coverage and chatter on Twitter with #ElvisWeek, his fan base is still enthusiastic. But the some of the most passionate fan letters about the bewhiskered singer can be found in the National Archives. In 1958, Linda [...]

Are these the most famous sideburns in music history? They might be the most famous sideburns in the National Archives. If you are a fan of Elvis, you’ve seen the photograph: Nixon and Elvis shaking hands in the White House. This is the most-requested image in our holdings. The quirky story behind the meeting of the King [...]

Today’s post is by Miriam Kleiman, public relations specialist at the National Archives. Jack Kerouac—American counterculture hero, king of the Beats, and author of On the Road—was a Navy military recruit who failed boot camp. Navy doctors found Kerouac delusional, grandiose, and promiscuous, and questioned his strange writing obsession. I learned this in 2005, right [...]

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 [...]